Granville spending $2 million to replace village's oldest water lines

After multiple water line breaks in recent months, the village of Granville is spending about $2 million to replace some of the village's oldest water lines.

The village is replacing 60- to 70-year-old water lines that service Burg Street, Chapin Place and New Burg Street, including the Granville High School and Middle School complex. Eventually, the pipes will connect to Denison University's 70 units of faculty and staff housing on New Burg Street as well, Village Manager Herb Koehler said in a June interview.

Granville Village Council members approved the project July 17.

Because of roughly half a dozen significant water line breaks in the past year, Koehler said the village has had problems with water pressure. He added it's not a major health and safety concern, but it does complicate fire response.

"Every break risks further issues with pressurization, risks further problems with maintaining pressure for the fire department and also for the fire suppression system at GHS," Koehler said in June.

Last fall, as the school year started, Koehler said village officials thoroughly studied the system to ensure the schools' fire suppression systems had the pressure needed in the event of a fire, and thankfully they did. But the line replacement will address the issue more fully, so the village or the school district don't have any concerns.

The project's contractor, Layton Inc., is expected to start the week of Aug. 5. The work should take about four and half months and will be done in three sections, Assistant Village Manager Courtney Ruppert said Thursday. She added that the village is starting the project quickly to hopefully finish before the ground freezes for the winter.

Koehler said in June the existing 6-inch cast iron pipes will be replaced with 8-inch ductile iron, a special kind of iron that is more resilient than cast iron.

Koehler said during the July 17 council meeting that during the project, there will be service interruptions as well as soil disruptions in residents' front or back yards, depending on where the lines are, but the trade off will be 40 to 50 years of long-term reliability.

Koehler told council members this project is the first of possibly two or three phases, adding that doing all the work at once was too cost prohibitive for the village. To complete all the work needed, he said it will cost the village about $6 million.

Plus, Koehler said there is a phase of the line replacement project that is in the same area of New Burg and Ohio 661 where the Ohio Department of Transportation is currently building a roundabout .

"We're able to isolate where we think the biggest issue is," he said. "It'll be less of a cost and might make the rest of the system even more robust."

mdevito@gannett.com

740-607-2175

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Granville spending $2 million to replace village's oldest water lines