Special Board of Aldermen 10-14-2021 Page 22
Alderman Schmidt
Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about lining of the old sewerage pipes instead of replacing?
Dave Boucher, Wastewater Superintendent
Sure. So that's part of the CMOM program that the city is undertaking and a lot of that starts off with an inventory of all
the city's assets with respect to its sewer infrastructure through TV tapes and cleaning of those lines. Then what we do
there, similar to the paving program, is we score the pipe. So we're able to identify cracks and, you know, breakages
and basically it allows you to look at the pipe. Is the pipe good enough to be salvaged for a liner or it is it too far gone
and need to be replaced? So it turns out to be a mixture. We try to line as many pipes as possible because look at the
benefit you get for lining. You’re not digging up the street. You're salvaging the existing infrastructure and you're putting
essentially almost what winds up to be a hard plastic liner in your pipe that's going to last, you Know, years on years on.
So does that answer your question?
Alderman Schmidt
Yes, follow up. So that's one of the problems we see between paving and all of the underground work that needs to be
done because we count on you to do that art before we can even get to the paving part.
Unidentified Male Speaker
Certainly and, you know, we've done CMOM programs in Manchester. The coordination between paving and trying to
do is particularly if it's a pipe replacement, the coordination with the paving program has to be kind of intertwined.
Because as Dan said, these cities also have five year moratoriums, you know, so if you're paving Main Street but you got
a pipe replacement on Main Street, you better know about or its five years down the road before you're going to be able
to do that.
Alderman Schmidt
And so some areas of our city are very old as far as the pipes that are there. Some of the streets downtown are simply
being patched, and replaced, and fixed because of this weight that we need to do. Is that right?
Dan Hudson, City Engineer
Sure. Engineer Hudson. Yes, that's true. We do differ paving, do some Band Aid type treatments on some roads that
for whatever reason can't do the sewer at that time and need to do it later. But as noted, we are doing as much lining as
we can. We find it about 20 times less expensive than doing the full dig replacement and much less disruptive. So we
have prioritized the system. We're looking at the older pipes of the system and pipe materials. Pipe materials have
changed over time. So we're focusing our effort on the ones that we've seen historically we’ve had more problems with
so we have a good effort and it is tightly coordinated with the paving program. As Engineer Saunders said earlier, ideally
the paving should be the last thing but that's not always possible but that is what we strive for.
Alderman Schmidt
Great. Thanks so much.
Alderman Klee
Thank you, again. | guess | have a question as far as the scoring is concerned. Do you like the paving project - don't
always necessarily do the worst ones right away. You try to get to those ones that are in the middle before they
completely break down. So for instance, | know Orange Street | think they went into do a lining when they got in. They
realized it was a lot worse and they had to, | think, do a lot more replacement or at least some of that to that extent. It
took longer than was expected but for the most part when you're doing this scoring, again like the paving project, do you
try to get in and take care of those before they get so bad versus going in and prioritizing those that are already bad?
Dan Hudson, City Engineer
Yeah, we do - it's a little bit different I'd say because, you know, for roads in bad shape is still passable, still usable but if
a sewer pipe collapses, you know, has a major issue, it's not usable and creates quite a problem. So it's a little bit
different. As we're doing the TV work when we find collapse pipes, we try to fix those as quickly as we can. But then we
