The city of Monroe held an open house last week to provide details on their upcoming Lewis Street sidewalk and sewer separation project. The city is hopeful that construction will begin in April.
Intended to separate the stormwater from the sanitary sewer system, the design concept incorporates the use of pervious concrete, which will be installed in the parking lanes along Lewis Street from just south of Fremont to the alleyway north of Main Street. On East Main Street, from Lewis Street to Ferry, the sidewalks will be replaced with pervious concrete and the parking lane will be constructed out of a material called PaveDrainGäó.
Since the pervious concrete needs between seven and 14 days to cure before vehicles can park on it, the city went with PaveDrainGäó along Main Street because it can be parked on right away.
"Once they get it down and are finished with it, people can park on it immediately,GÇ¥ said Senior Engineer Jim Gardner. "So that should save a couple of weeks downtime on Main Street, and then we're going to alternate it, so they can only have one side of Main Street shut down at a time. We've got to do that for the businesses.GÇ¥
The object of the project is to save the city money in the long-term through the use of materials that effectively process stormwater by allowing it to simply pass through into the drain-rock and infiltrate the underlying soils. This means that the stormwater will bypass the city's sanitary sewer system entirely, removing approximately 7,600,000 gallons of stormwater from the sewer system.
Known as both sustainable and "green,GÇ¥ both the pervious concrete and the PaveDrainGäó material are meant to minimize environmental impact. The pervious concrete, which was used on Hill, North Blakeley and Fremont Streets, uses 3/8-inch gravel, which is bound together with a porous paste.
PaveDrainGäó is composed of large concrete blocks that are joined together with a 1/4-inch gap in between. The material is installed in 12-foot by 12-foot segments. Both the PaveDrainGäó and the pervious concrete allow stormwater to pass right through and into the soil below. Catch basins in the project area will be removed.
Largely funded by a Washington State Department of Ecology grant, the project has been in the design phase all summer. The city intends to put the project out for bid in January, with the hope of awarding the contract for construction sometime in February. Construction is expected to take place from April to June of 2015. All scheduling at this point is still tentative.
The total project costs are being estimated at $1,042,593, with $781,945 coming from the ecology grant. The city obligation is expected to be approximately $260,648.
Once the approximately 1,160-foot project is completed, it will save the city roughly $2,600 per year in electricity costs and will increase capacity at Monroe's wastewater treatment plant by approximately 600 homes.
In conjunction with both the North Blakeley and the Fremont Street project, a total of 23,000,000 gallons of stormwater will no longer flow to the wastewater treatment plant, which will save the city approximately $8,000 per year in electricity costs.
For more information on the project, please visit the city's website at: http://monroewa.gov/index.aspx?nid=506.
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