FARMINGTON – A blockage in a subsurface drainage system off of Front Street could potentially cost the town nearly $200,000 to permanently fix, selectmen learned Tuesday evening.
Town Manager Richard Davis reported that the town had investigated the recent drainage issues along the street, which culminated in a large sinkhole forming outside the entrance to the Narrow Gauge Cinema parking lot. While the sinkhole was filled with gravel, Davis said, the underlying causes remain a problem.
There is a 42-inch pipe, made out of corrugated metal, which runs 1,400 feet from Front Street down across the Prescott Field baseball diamond to reach the Sandy River. That pipe was made by the same company, Kaiser Aluminum, which sold Farmington the pipe that ran under Broadway for 18 years. The Broadway pipe had to be removed in 2006, after the town discovered it had collapsed in several places.
Now, Davis and Public Works Department’s Denis Castonguay worry that a similar situation may be occuring again. Testing the system with smoke and cameras indicates that the blockage is beneath the baseball field.
“We think it’s collapsed or crushed somewhere,” Davis said, “causing the water to back up to the road and not drain.”
A quote from Dirigo Engineering puts a total replacement of the metal pipe with a plastic-based, 48-inch pipe, along with replacing five catch basins, at $197,000. Farmington, Davis noted, did not have that kind of money. The 2006 project along Broadway cost $250,000, paid for out of the undesignated funds.
“I’m not comfortable taking any more [out of the undesignated fund],” Davis told selectmen. “We don’t have the money to do this right now – but it needs to be done.”
Instead, Castonguay is looking into potentially locating the exact point the pipe collapsed and running spot repairs. This would fix the problem, assuming the rest of the pipe holds together, and would be much less expensive. Later, the town could go back and replace the faulty pipe.
Davis also noted that a granite box drain system, which extended across Front Street toward the My Crop Paper Scissors Store and a network of rooftop and parking lot drains, would also need to be replaced. This issue was unrelated to the metal pipe to the south, but was likely related to the constant stress of traffic on the system. The $197,000 quote from Dirigo Engineering would not include that repair, the cost of which was still being researched.
Dealing with another maintenance expenditure, selectmen learned that repairing the engine of Fire Engine No. 1 would cost a little less that $7,000. This is actually good news; original quotes had indicated the repair would cost $10,000. Engine No. 1 has been in service six years, for 14,000 miles of use. As the Farmington Fire Rescue’s maintenance budget is already depleted, the town will seek to cover the expenditure elsewhere in the department’s budget.
