Council hears update on 4th Avenue North water main project
By PHIL MONSON
HUMBOLDT - It’s been literally a rocky path forward for contractors working on the 4th Avenue North water main improvement project in Humboldt this summer.
At the Humboldt City Council’s regular meeting held Monday night, July 7, the council approved payment of $222,378.28 to Wunsch Construction of Greene, to cover 40 percent of the overall costs. Prior to that, the council approved a change order for a net increase of $28,566.40.
Nick Frederiksen of ISG Engineering, was at Monday’s meeting to update the council on the project.
“Other than a few loose ends, the water main is in. They have been working on water service lines for the last two weeks,” Frederiksen said. “It’s been a little bit slow going. The amount of rock we have encountered is more than we had expected.”
“We’ve had to haul out rock but there has been a significant amount of new material that has been brought in to replace the rock that has been taken out,” Frederiksen said. “They started on the west end and about a third of a block in they encountered large pieces of stone that had to be taken out. Some rock was two to three times the size of me, about 3,000 pounds.”
“Wunsch has their work cut out. The increase is more than a fair price for what they have had to take out and bring in to fill in the trench,” Frederiksen said.
“It’s been a battle. When those lines were put in the first time, they weren’t very kind as they put all of the rubble back on top of the water lines, so we can’t even pull the old out and pull the new in. I was out there today and there’s table tops of bedrock sitting right on the water service, rock they put back on top when they put it in originally,” Frederiksen said. “We’re going to try and balance things out before we come up with the final numbers,” Frederiksen said. “We’ve changed locations to better allow installs. We’ve moved all over based on what we are hitting. I would expect in the next month we should be mostly completed.”
Humboldt Mayor Dan Scholl asked if there had been any interruptions in service for residents along the street.
“Yes, there have been for a short time. They have been notified when service had to be shut out in order for us to cut in,” Frederiksen said. “We have also been pressure-testing the main inside people’s houses, from the sidewalks to the house to verify if there are any leaks. A lot of different pieces have been added on to this project because of the amount of water leaks that have been going on.”
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