PORT ANGELES — An echoing rattle will reverberate across the daytime cityscape this week as workers complete the pump-station portion — and final phase — of the estimated $45 million combined sewer overflow project.
Workers will mobilize today and by Tuesday they will begin shaking and pulling tooth-like metal sheets that were noisily pile-driven into the hard earth at the western end of Front Street, near where the thoroughfare turns into Marine Drive, city Engineer Mike Puntenney said last week.
Exactly when the cacophony begins “just depends on how long it takes to get set up,” he said.
“Once they get started, we are expecting it to be a week-long operation.”
Puntenney said traffic impacts will be minimal since the $15.2 million Stage 2 segment of the combined sewer overflow project, called the CSO project, is completed.
It will cap a six-year overall project that Puntenney said should be completed by mid-July.
Some solace might be gained by the sound the residents nearby won’t hear: the deafening clang of metal on metal that issued forth from the pile-driving of those corrugated sheets this spring, Puntenney said.
A 255-ton-force vibratory hammer quivered downward then at 1,650 shakes a minute.
This time around, there won’t be the pounding.
“This one sounds like it kind of rattles,” Puntenney said.
“The difference here is that basically what they have to do is shake them loose and basically they pull them out the rest of the way, which is a lot simpler and a lot less noisy than when they are putting them in.”
The sheets, which took longer to pound than expected because of the unyielding soil, were employed to shore up walls and block water from the pump station’s underbelly while its innards were installed.
The extraction will allow construction of the 3,200-square-foot, 21-foot-tall building that should be completed by summer 2016, Puntenney said.
It will replace a pump station slated for demolition across Front Street from the new structure.
The project contractor is TEK Construction Inc. of Bellingham.
While pile driving, workers encountered dense, hard soil that caused a delay in completion beyond the end-of-April target.
“The contractor is probably about two months behind schedule,” Puntenney said, adding the final cost is expected to fall within the contingency allowed for the project.
He said the city is still negotiating the final amount of the construction management contract.
Once the pump station is completed, all that will remain of the overall project is installation of a manhole in the vicinity of Railroad Avenue and Laurel Street.
That will be “a relatively quick operation,” Puntenney said.
The CSO project — pump station, sewer mains and all — is being built under a 2006 agreed order with the state Department of Ecology that will produce the priciest public works effort in the city’s history.
Under the pact, the city is reducing the number of sewage overflows into Port Angeles Harbor.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
