Easements needed before city can start work

Easements will be needed before improvements can be made on a drainage system, Kingston’s engineer says.

The city needs to obtain easements on private properties in order to eventually make improvements to its Tannery Brook drainage system, city Engineer Ralph Swenson said.

During a meeting of the Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee on Wednesday, Swenson requested $6,500 in funding to survey properties so the city could obtain eight easements giving it access to the areas where work needs to be done. He said the Tannery Brook partly runs through private property between Washington Avenue and Warren Street, leading to the need for the easements.

The committee approved a resolution authorizing $6,500 be taken from the city’s contingency fund to pay for the survey work. The resolution must still be adopted by the full council, which meets again May 1.

Swenson said he expects to have the easements within “a few months.”

In a letter to Common Council President James Noble, Swenson said the Tannery Brook is an important drainage conduit that serves a large portion of the city.

“Improvements to the channel have been made over the years to improve channel capacity in conjunction with needed sanitary sewer improvements and stand-alone flooding abatement efforts,” Swenson wrote. “There remain two unimproved segments of the Tannery Brook, the portion between Washington Avenue and Warren Street, and that portion upstream of Hewitt to the Linderman Avenue crossing.” He said the city is focused on the portion between Washington Avenue and Warren Street currently because that area is prone to flooding due to lack of hydraulic capacity and it is the sole remaining length of the Tannery Brook Sanitary Sewer that is still unimproved.

“There is some structural issues with the box culvert that is existing on private property and with the open channel that goes through private property,” Swenson told the committee Wednesday.

Swenson said that, in addition to seeking the easements, he would apply for a state grant of approximately $500,000 to pay for the actual improvement work that is needed. He said the grant application was due Friday.