PORT ANGELES — Work on the First Street stormwater project may have to be delayed until next week because of heavy snowfall.
Crews were scheduled to finish preparatory work Wednesday but had to stop that afternoon because of the weather, said Brian Menard, superintendent of Road Construction Northwest Inc.
The Renton-based company, which is the city’s contractor on the project, may have to finish that work Monday and begin cutting into pavement early next week, he said.
Pavement cutting was scheduled to begin today.
“The only thing we’re doing is light surveying this week probably,” Menard said.
Meanwhile, the city has given the company the go-ahead to work Sunday evenings to lessen the amount of work occurring Fridays, when traffic is most heavy.
Menard said crews won’t work every Sunday since it involves overtime.
The new schedule allows for crews to work from 6 p.m. to midnight Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. (with cleanup lasting up to midnight) Mondays through Thursdays, and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays, said Menard and Kate O’Claire, Northwestern Territories Inc. civil engineer.
New schedule
NTI of Port Angeles is the lead project manager.
O’Claire said the snow may cause the first phase of the project to miss the March 25 deadline by a few days.
The first phase involves RCNW installing a water filter at Valley and First streets and installing a new stormwater pipe under the south lane of First Street up to Oak Street.
From there, workers will then install the pipe up to Laurel Street. That work is scheduled to be done by Memorial Day (May 30).
Through June 30, the schedule calls for workers to finish paving both lanes of the road between Valley and Laurel streets, applying fog seal to the block between Laurel and Lincoln streets, adding bike lanes and adding and replacing crosswalks.
The project has a price tag of about $2.25 million, according to the city.
The city is contributing $225,000 for street paving, with the rest coming from the National Park Service.
The park service is covering that cost because the project is part of its Elwha River restoration effort.
The First Street project is intended to remove enough stormwater from the city’s sewer system to offset the contribution of sewage from the Lower Elwha Klallam reservation.
The tribe will be connected to the city’s sewers because it’s expected that its septic tanks will become unusable as the ground water level rises as a result of the removal of the two Elwha River dams.
The park service agreed to fund a stormwater disconnect project to offset the impact on the city’s sewage overflow problem.
Construction of the sewer system will start in mid-March and be finished by June 2012.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
