East Texas

By KELLY GOOCH
Staff Writer

JACKSONVILLE -- Some households in Jacksonville, along with West Side Elementary School, will be getting new sewer lines in the near future, which should bring improvements to the affected area, City Manager Mo Raissi said.

A little more than 4,000 feet of sewer lines will be replaced starting at the intersection of Hickory Street and Sunset Avenue and will run north to Pine Street, said Will Cole, public works director.

When the area was originally surveyed, 11 service connections to households were expected to be affected, but he said that was due to a "glitch," and probably five more connections were later added to the survey after initially being left off.

Cole said that as a sewer line deteriorates, it adds water.

In other words, it eventually could get to where a toilet couldn't be flushed when it rains or the city's sewer system could be flooded if lines are not maintained, he said.

Raissi said some of the current sewer lines were cracked and some had blockage.

Some of the pipes probably drained slowly, he said, but that will not happen anymore once the current pipes are replaced.

The new pipes will also not get clogged up with rain water, Raissi said.

The sewer replacement project will be partly paid for by a $250,000 grant from the state's Office of Rural Community Affairs.

"Luckily, we got the grant to supplement this thing," Raissi said, adding that the city was able to get the grant because the area where the sewer line goes is a low-income area.

He said the city will pay less than $119,500 to cover the rest of the total project cost.

The money the city has to pay will come from the $8 million sewer replacement loan that Jacksonville previously received from the Texas Water Development Board, Raissi said.

Duplichain Contractors out of Alto made the lowest bid, Mayor Robert Haberle said, which was $242,614.50.

Raissi noted that their bid price was more than $36,000 less than the initial estimate by engineering firm Stokes & Associates, Inc.

Haberle said Duplichain Contractors had done projects with the city before, including a sewer project near Lon Morris College.

The sewer replacement project is scheduled to begin within the next 30 or 45 days, Cole said, and will probably take 120 days to complete once it is started.