By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Saugatuck City Council Monday approved $22,600 in engineering services towards an estimated $400,000 crushing and shaping with drainage repairs this fall to Taylor, Takken, East and West streets between Allegan and Mason streets.
The good news: Engineer Fleis & VandenBrink considers these streets high-priority improvements because they do not have urgent sanitary sewer or water main/service needs, thus can be implemented quickly not being connected to outside funding for utility work.
The bad news: many more streets do have these needs, which does not leave Saugatuck alone. Douglas and other municipalities with older infrastructures face state-mandated water line improvements too.
To that end, council Monday further approved paying Fleis $16,000 to help apply for an $8.4-million Drinking Water State Revolving Fund grant or low-interest loan to help the city comply with Michigan Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) requirements to replace such lines by 5 to 7 percent yearly by Jan. 1, 2041.The full application this year is due by June 1.
Those funds would replace aging water mains and lead service lines, make possible wellhouse and storage field improvements plus well field looping. The grant or loan program is meant to help water suppliers meet requirements of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
A preliminary Distribution System Materials Inventory submitted by the Jan. 1, 2020 state deadline identified 203 of the city’s 907 total service connections known or suspected to contain lead, 198 known or suspected to contain galvanized previously connected to lead, 229 of unknown material and 277 services known to contain neither.
As such, Fleis anticipates most city streets will be impacted in some way by water service replacement to meet the LCR.
Saugatuck’s state-mandated yearly Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating for 2022 appears nearby and offers a comprehensive view of road conditions city-wide.
Fleis’s updated Capital Improvements Plan (CIP) submitted Monday also includes designing and bidding drain improvements on Mason Street between Takken and Maple streets, a step towards addressing erosion downstream of the city’s stormwater outlet on the northwest corner of Maple and Mason.
Other road priorities eyed include $25,000 worth of system-wide crack sealing this fall, plus patching and surface sealing to take place next spring. Saugatuck has budgeted $600,000 total for road improvements this coming year, city manager Ryan Heise said.
Resurfacing East, West, Takken and Taylor can be achieved quickly because the water main in the area was built in the late 1980s when lead materials were no longer in use. The sanitary sewer is older, but there are no known significant deficiencies based on the Kalamazoo Lake Sewer & Water Authority asset management plan.
The project is a high priority because pavement there is failing, including a large area on Takken near Mason Street that went out last spring, apparently as a result of a failed underdrain causing saturation of the area. A patch was applied as a short-term solution in anticipation of full repair in 2023.
The CIP also includes annual allotments for crack sealing and slurry/fog sealing. Streets in good condition, Fleis advises, should be crack sealed periodically to keep the pavement in good condition as long as possible.
As more cracking develops, slurry or fog sealing are recommended to prolong the pavement life. Those are surface treatments similar to chip sealing but more suitable for an urban environment.