By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Parsons will soon be seeing work crews on the streets for the City’s Sewer Project. Thrasher Project Manager Eric Sherrard updated the Parsons City Council on March 3rd during their regular session that he anticipated crews to be on the streets of Parsons to begin camera work and some minor excavations the week of March 9th.
“They are actually planning to be out next week starting the camera work for the sewer,” Sherrard said.
Crews have been in town doing “low impact” studies such as reconnaissance. However, crews are anticipated, according to Sherrard, to be in town next week placing cameras in lines and investigating to locate sewer lines that are not located on maps or otherwise not known or hard to get to. The work may involve some small measure of excavation, Sherrard said.
“There’s a couple of sewer lines that we don’t really know the exact location because there’s no manholes,” Sherrard said. “So they’re actually going to have to dig down. We found clean outs, they’re going to expose them so that we can just verify locations.”
Thrasher is anticipating receiving an updated schedule of work and will be putting out notices to the public so that residents of Parsons are aware of what impact the work will entail, Sherrard said. Sherrard said there was the slight chance that a water line may occasionally be struck during construction, but the main impact would come in the form of traffic impacts.
“There will always be traffic impacts,” Sherrard said. “They will have to put out signs, work with the town, provide updates to the Police Department.”
Parsons Police Chief Kevin Keplinger requested that should construction crews require any assistance, that his office be notified. Keplinger also said that his office was happy to assist the crews in any way they needed to make sure the traffic impacts went smoothly. Traffic impacts are expected to be minimal.
“I’m excited that next week we will actually see something happening,” Sherrard said.
The Department of Environmental Protection provided approval for Plans and Specs on the City of Parsons Water Project. Sherrard said that he is awaiting a binding commital request from Region VII to DEP and IJDC. Once the request is finalized, Sherrard said, the project will be able to go to bid.
“I’m hoping to get it in a couple of weeks, but it could take a month,” Sherrard said. “That will be submitted this week.”
Sherrard said he was hopeful that the project would get some reasonably priced bids. Currently, bid prices on construction jobs have been coming down, according to Sherrard.
“I don’t want to jinx it,” Sherrard said. “We are getting good numbers on line jobs.”
Sherrard said he was also excited that both projects were going to be able to be completed at the same time. Future projects that Thrasher is monitoring for grant money on behalf of the City of Parsons, according to Sherrard included a contract for designs for the Sewer Plant. While the contracts were submitted to the Council, no action was taken until the next meeting.
The Sewer Plant Project has been exploring different technologies, Sherrard said. The next step will be site tours of facilities similar to the technologies being explored. Water and Sewer Director Red Lipscomb and Sherrard are expected to be making site visits, according to Sherrard, with an open invitation to the Council to join them.
Other future projects that Thrasher is eyeing grant funding for on behalf of the City of Parsons includes the next phase of Water and Sewer improvements which include the three way stoplight intersection at Highway 219 and Main Street. This was a project heavily discussed by Sherrard and the Council.
A third major project discussed for future funding was the Water Tank Project. Funding and completion of this project would see water tanks at both ends of Parsons, allowing for water access in case of failure at one end, Sherrard said.
Thrasher is also working on completing an updated map of all replaced and updated lines in the City. Thrasher has been working with all the files they have accumulated since they began working with the City in the 1990’s, according to Sherrard. Sherrard informed the Council that the firm would be sharing the map with the City.
