The water company is planning to shut down South Avenue during weekday work hours between Harrison Avenue and Farm Road in July and August as part of a multi-year water main installation that is cutting across New Canaan, officials say.
A project that started three years ago, the installation of the 36-inch pipe has already seen road closures and detours in eastern New Canaan, where the main comes in from Wilton and ultimately will feed toward Stamford and Greenwich.
Public Works Director Tiger Mann said during Tuesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting that his department is meeting this week with Aquarion to discuss bids for the job.
Selectman Steve Karl, noting that New Canaan itself is not benefiting from the disruptive project, asked during the regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference: “They’re not planning on doing Farm Road during the school year, right?”
Mann said no, it should wrap up during the summer months.
The discussion emerged while the selectmen were approving a separate contract for sidewalk work along South Avenue from Cherry Street to Surrey Road. The selectmen voted 3-0 to approve a pair of contracts—for $18,000 and $20,000—to get surveying and design work to replace pedestrian ramps, where needed, along that route. Mann said that federal standards now require a ramp as well as a colored tactile “warning screen,” as pictured above at South and Maple, at all sidewalk-street intersections along state roads. (Nearly all of South Avenue in New Canaan doubles as state Route 124 and/or 106.) The actual work of installing 47 pedestrian ramps at 23 intersections along South Avenue will cost the town about $205,000, Mann said.
He said that the DPW is hoping to “piggyback” on the Aquarion water main work to get two crews inside the work area simultaneously so that while the water main is going in, the pedestrian ramps are also getting upgraded to code.
“That’s the whole point of this closure,” Mann said.
“We’re hoping that we can finish this design and possibly piggyback on that closure and have our contractor working inside that closure during that time, so that we have less traffic,” he said.
Mann added: “It was either to do one crew during the summer for two years or two crews shut the road down one summer [and] be done. And the only way that we can get two crews inside the work zone is to shut the road down because the DOT doesn’t allow two crews inside a mile of each other working on the same state road. If we do closure detours and we’re able to crews inside that work area.”
The selectmen asked whether the 47 ramps covered both sides of South Avenue (yes), whether all of the intersections are failing to meet code (most but not all), whether the ramps will need to be redone again (not for 10 or 20 years hopefully), whether the money is available for the current fiscal year (yes it’s in the “sidewalk budget”) and whether there are multiple surveyors who do this type of work (yes though the professionals at Chris DeAngelis, PE LLC and Shevlin Land Surveying, LLC who are being hired for the designing and surveying know the town well and have worked well in the past).