The water main replacement at the corner of Highway 34 and North 6th Street in Monmouth is nearing completion. Operations Director Ken Helms says the project was challenging due to the high traffic area:
“That was a very, very challenging project. They had to bore the 12 inch, specialized pipe underneath the highway so we didn’t have to do some open trenching. When you are talking about open trenching on a highway, especially with the traffic counts that we get; our daily traffic counts are probably 35,000 right at that corner. We avoided that and did a direction bore that went underneath. They put two valves in so they could do it safely and get it all hooked up,” informs Helms.
“Since we shut down that section on the line, there are some very specific requirements that the Illinois EPA makes us do to test the water. It requires a minimum of 48 hours, plus some flushing time out of a hydrant that is right there in the immediate proximity before we can take everybody off the boil order,” Helms adds.
The boil order only affected Scooters and Fareway Meat and Grocery.
