WINONA LAKE – Sewer and road issues made up the bulk of the Winona Lake Town Council meeting Tuesday night. Town engineer Larry Long said the parking lot on the east side of Chestnut Avenue will have to be modified because of a sewer line issue discovered there. He said when the parking lot was designed they knew there was a sewer line, but during construction they found the line was in a location “nobody had expected.” There’s a manhole downstream of the parking lot and another manhole upstream of it, but the sewer line doesn’t run in a straight line between the two. It loops to the east. “Not only is it out of alignment horizontally, it’s out of alignment vertically,” Long said. He said the sewer line has about 6 inches of covering and is a 10-inch line. “It carries a lot of flow. Really, a lot of flow. This line, I would say, is one of the top three lines as far as critical lines we have in town,” Long explained. The line takes over 50 percent of Grace College’s sewer, everything from Chestnut and everything from 7th Street down. He said there were two solutions. One was to cut back on the parking lot to half of what it is now, which would severely impact the Greenway Trail project there. The other solution is to relocate the sewer line, which Long said was his recommendation. The proposal would be to put a manhole between the other two, which would be a deep manhole where the sewer line comes in and sweeps to the bottom, reducing some of the elevation. About 200 feet of sanitary sewer also would be installed. The standards for sanitary sewer is established by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, one of which is that the lines between manholes is supposed to be straight vertically and horizontally. “It’s in a critical area. If we should have an event with that sewer line, it would not be a good situation,” Long warned. Cost to replace the line is about $33,122, though Long said his estimate was $27,000 and they may be able to do it for that. The council approved for Phend & Brown to do the work on the sewer line. Long then told the council about a storm water issue the town has on Robson Road. He said there’s an area on Robson Road where stormwater generally gets to the north side of the street, but in a low area, the pavement is pitched so that all the water runs to the south side. “What we’ve experienced there is that the water lays on the side of the road and off the road a little bit until it gets to the point where it runs across the road, goes over to the neighbor’s property and he has some washout,” Long said. He said there is evidence where the water lays on the edge of the pavement and it’s distressed the pavement, creating some holes that have been patched. The solution, he said, is to put a catch basin on one side, a tile under the road and create a side ditch on the one side to get the water to the catch basin. Some grade correction would be done on the pavement. The proposal includes taking a 100-foot section of the road to be repaved. While Long’s estimate was $19,600, he said he got a quote for the work from Niblock Excavating for $22,864 and one from Phend & Brown for $24,758. He recommended the Niblock quote. After discussion and hearing from a Robson Road resident who was happy the town was considering doing something about the problem, the council voted to do the work but not repave it this year. Without the repaving, the cost of the project will be cut in about half. In other business, the council: • Adopted the 2016 budget as previously presented. It will be submitted to the state today for review. A public hearing for it was Sept. 15. The 2016 budget is proposed at $5.2 million. • Approved the lease-purchase through the Indiana State Bond Bank of a new, completely equipped plow truck from Rice Ford for the street department. The cost is three annual payments of $25,343 at an interest rate of 1.78 percent. Street Department Superintendent Tom Miller said the truck can be used year-round. “I think it’s a good opportunity at a really low interest rate,” he said. The plow truck will replace the Severn Trent truck that is going to auction. • Approved refurbishing the Barker lift station this year for $25,489.56. The wet well where all the sewage comes into has water leaking into it. The lift stations at Stonecamp and Stonehenge will be looked at in the spring. • Heard from Miller that starting Nov. 2, the street department will discontinue doing brush pickup and start doing leaf pickup. • Heard the “Autumn in the Aire” concert is at the Church of the Good Shepherd Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.; on Oct. 30 from 6 to 9 p.m., Grace College will have its annual fun fest with a theme of “Down on the Farm”; trick-or-treating is Oct. 31, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.; Winona Lake Community Dinner at Westminster is Nov. 12 at 6 p.m., tickets are $18 and can be purchased at the town hall; and the Lakeland Community Concert Association concert is Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at Rodeheaver Auditorium.
