For the past week a portion of South Alaska Street under which a water main cracked, sending a geyser up through the pavement, had been torn up with crews digging out the pipe. At different points the stretch resembled a ditch and then a trench.
Having dug up the pipe, crews found a four-foot crack running laterally down the 10-inch steel pipe. But that wasn’t all. The leaking water caused a significant sinkhole to open up under the pavement.
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As of the weekend, residents were allowed to drive on the stretch north of Evergreen Avenue, though they were driving on gravel as opposed to the familiar pavement.
The ease of access, however, will be short lived. Cole said that now that he’s gotten a look at the pipes under the road on the north end he of the portion that’s been replaced he’s realized they need to be replaced as well. They’re leaking.
“None of us really wants to do it, it’s just that it beats doing it in 40-below weather,” Cole said. “If I don’t do something with it, it will surely not make it the year.”
He said crews will eventually be tearing up the road from the Evergreen intersection to about Arctic Avenue. Once he gets past Dogwood he’ll likely send a crew out to lay down at least two inches of asphalt on the part he’s already fixed, with the expectation that eventually they’ll lay down another two inches.
Though the construction has been done in-house, Cole said that as of now it doesn’t look like there’s any need to worry on the budget front.
“It’s not too bad,” he said.
He said a lot of the money for the emergency construction has come through grants Palmer had in place to redo its water system. He said the decision was made to do the job in-house, rather than through a contractor as is the case with most of the other pipe replacement mostly because it needed to get done immediately.
“We can’t get construction documents done quick enough,” Cole said.
Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.
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