People who live along NW 1st Street in Eagle Grove, or who regularly cross that street to get from Broadway to the north side of town are anxiously awaiting the road construction to be finished that has been going on all summer. While it may appear that not much work is being completed, Eagle Grove City Administrator Bryce Davis wants the public to know that most of the work going on right now is underground.
Davis said anytime they do a street construction project, there are always a couple of things to consider. Of course they have an idea of where the infrastructure is, but there are no guarantees until they excavate.
“Obviously, some of the stuff (on this street) was put in the ground a 50 to 100 years ago and maps were basically in people’s minds. When they drew them out and stuffed them into a file, they were somewhat accurate, but you might have 10 maps of the same street, so you don’t know which one is the most accurate unless you’ve worked on the project before,” said Davis.
But at the end of the day, they don’t know before they get underground what the conditions of the connection points are and actually see them.
Another factor to consider is that codes have changed.
“What’s legal and what’s not legal actually impacts what we have to do when we field verify,” explained Davis.
When they started the NW 1st Street project, they found substantial underground infrastructure they had to tackle with storm water and manholes to replace as well as spot repairs for the sewer.
“We’re plugging along,” said Davis. “But they are behind schedule in terms of their schedule, but I’m not too worried about it at this particular time because they do have until the end of October to substantially complete the project (have concrete poured)…the road has to be open before winter.”
However, Davis did say that the City has had to make some change orders and adjustments because of what they found with the infrastructure underground and things that needed to be repaired or corrected. That means ordering some new material and waiting for it to arrive.
“We are now at the point of installing a storm sewer between Lincoln and Cadwell. Then they will come back and pack the road, rock the road, and then it will be paved,” said Davis. “There’s a lot of underground work so there’s not a lot of progress that people can see. There are a lot of issues that came up that had to be corrected. Obviously rain events didn’t help, but at the end of the day, our contracts with the contractors state they have to be done by a deadline. If they are not done by that deadline, they have to have an acceptable reason as to why they are not finished.”
If these days are not justifiable, the City has the right to make the contractors pay them a certain amount of money for every day until the project is completed.
“It’s a little too soon to tell if the roads will be complete…because there's a few months left and they could hire extra crews to get the project done on time,” said Davis.
