PORT ANGELES — With luck, there’ll be a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.
Without it, the west side of downtown will echo to decidedly heavy metal.
Whether it’s to the beat of Jerry Lee Lewis or Black Sabbath, piling placement is expected to start Monday on the wedge-shaped site of a new sewage pump station where West Front Street meets Marine Drive.
If all goes well for the next two weeks, 86 pairs of 50-foot-by-4-foot sheet-metal pilings will be vibrated into the earth to form a new foundation for the building, which is necessary because the site is filled-in former tidal flat.
But if the soil proves to be denser than the contractor anticipates, they’ll have to be pounded into the ground.
Some us remember the first few notes of Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs.” Well, we’d best still like the sounds of pile driving after these 39 years, for we might hear them at all hours daily save from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. until the pilings are placed.
Two weeks
Jeff Bender, the city of Port Angeles’ manager for the $15 million phase two of the combined sewer overflow (CSO) project, says the piling work is expected to last two weeks.
Again, that’s with luck.
Without it, he said, “it may take a little longer. They’ll know better after they start driving the pilings.”
Businesses in the vicinity — including Family Medicine of Port Angeles, Storm King Crossfit, The Baby Store, Peninsula Daily News and the 76 Food Mart/Union 76 station — received notice of the work last week.
The piles will be shaken or driven into the soil until only 4 feet remain above ground.
Meanwhile, groundwater will be pumped from the site as excavating continues along Front Street.
Traffic in one lane
Traffic likely will be narrowed to one lane, with delays expected.
When finished, the pump station at 314 Marine Drive will be able to handle 28 million gallons of sewage per day instead of the present pump station’s 8 million gallons.
That facility, located across Marine Drive from the new station site, will be razed.
For people puzzled by the address above, Front Street turns into Marine Drive where it curves after Oak Street, according to city officials.
The noise and snarled traffic are part of the city’s meeting an agreed order with the state Department of Ecology to stop dumping raw sewage into Port Angeles Harbor, as happens when heavy rains overwhelm the current storm and sanitary sewers.
Besides the construction starting Monday, night work will close Oak Street at Front Street within three weeks, detouring it or reducing it to one lane, to install a diversion sewer, Bender said.
$15 million bid
TEK Construction Inc. of Bellingham was awarded the $15 million construction bid for phase of the CSO project.
Crews with subcontractor Strider Construction have dug trenches under Marine Drive to continue the line of conduits and pipes that will eventually connect with the eastern portion of the downtown project, Bender said.
Other improvements planned in conjunction with CSO construction will be adding bike boxes, brick crosswalks, landscaping and fresh striping, according to city documents.
When work’s over
When the racket is over and the work is done, the project is expected to prevent spills into the harbor, such as the latest spill of 7 million gallons of diluted, untreated sewage into the harbor March 15, when heavy rains overflowed the sewer system.
That could be an occasion to celebrate by singing Lewis’ 1957 ditty “Down the Line.” Or perhaps McCartney’s 1980 “Take It Away.”
You’ll have had enough by then of “Silly Love Songs.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
