Progress, possible change in township

Towamencin trail project could be scaled down as pipeline replacement begins

TOWAMENCIN >> A key pipeline upgrade project in Towamencin is moving ahead, and an adjacent trail extension may need to be scaled back to fit the township’s budget.

Township officials got an update Wednesday on a Towamencin Municipal Authority project to replace more than a mile of pipeline running along Kriebel Road, and discussed whether to shorten a planned trail project running along part of that route.

“The whole goal of this project is to reduce the amount of sanitary sewer overflows that occur on this interceptor,” said Brent Wagner, Executive Director of the Towamencin Municipal Authority.

Wagner and Nathan Rostad, a senior project engineer with Bursich Associates and TMA’s engineering consultant, described for the board how, since 2012, the TMA — which was created as the Upper Gwynedd-Towamencin Municipal Authority until the two townships divided it in 2015 — has been under a corrective action plan issued by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to eliminate those overflows.

The Kriebel Road Interceptor project is the latest step in that plan, and TMA has agreed to upgrade roughly 6,500 feet of pipe and 21 manholes on the pipeline, which runs roughly east to west along Kriebel Road from Green Lane Road to a cul-de-sac near Valley View Way.

“One of our main concerns was that we’re going to have a lot of vegetation coming down, and

quite a few trees coming down as well,” Wagner said.

“This whole line has been videotaped by the authority to make sure we don’t miss any trees that come down. Our goal is for every tree that is taken down to be replaced with native vegetation,” he said.

Construction on the pipeline project began this past week, and as of Wednesday four trees have been taken down, Wagner told the board. While work is underway, part of Kriebel Road will be closed between Green Lane Road and Parkview Drive during the day for several weeks, and part of Trumbauer Road will be closed for several days, with staging areas for equipment to be located just west of Green Lane Road and east of Trumbauer Road.

Once the pipeline is replaced, Wagner said, TMA plans to plant new trees to replace those taken down, but farther from the new lines than the ones they will replace.

“As these sewer lines go down, we want vegetation at least 20 feet away from those sewer lines, so in the future, in 20 or 30 years, these trees don’t get into those pipelines and start destroying those lines too,” he said.

“We want to protect these sewer lines for the next 50 years,” Wagner said.

Rostad said roughly 500 residents in the area have been notified of the project, and TMA’s goal is to have the project complete by late summer. Wagner said the roughly $1.8 million to $2 million project cost should be covered by a bond borrowing last year to cover TMA capital projects, and should not have any impact on sewer rates.

Sewer service to residents in those areas should not be interrupted, Wagner said, and construction areas will be fenced off at the end of each day. The replacement trees will likely not go in until next spring, Wagner told the board, and local wildlife are the reason why.

“The concern is, if you’re planting in the fall, that with the amount of deer in that location, the deer in the winter will eat the buds off and kill all of the trees. Our goal is, early next year, to re-vegetate the trees we lose due to construction,” Wagner said.

Once the new pipeline is in place, Rostad said, the old manholes will be abandoned, and the pipeline will be filled with stone and concrete to prevent ground water from flowing through the old lines. The parts of Kriebel Road that are disturbed by the construction will be repaved afterward, and inflatable plugs will be used to keep sewer flow from backing up into lateral lines running into homes there.

According to supervisors Chairman Chuck Wilson, replacing the Kriebel Road Interceptor will be the third phase of the corrective action plan issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection in response to the repeated overflows; earlier phases at the TMA plant itself and on a line near the Towamencin Creek have already been completed.

With that project now getting underway, the TMA officials and the township supervisors also discussed a related project, the construction of a trail extension from the Trumbauer Road bridge to Valley View Way that was originally included in that project.

“While a savings was expected by combining the two projects, the cost for the trail came in much higher than anticipated when the bids were received,” said Wilson.

According to township sewer engineer Bill Dingman, a total of nine bidders put in bids to do the sewer line project with the trail included, and six of those bidders produced bids with prices that were lower on the trail component than the bidder that had the lowest cost for the entire project.

The bidder chosen to do the pipeline project had included in their bid a price of roughly $480,000 for the trail project, Dingman told the board. The three lowest for the trail portion averaged roughly $380,000, thus his recommendation to split out the trail project.

“If we re-bid the project as a trail project (only), we could see some savings,” he said.

The bid package already put out specified 3,800 linear feet of trail, 10 feet wide and paved. Cutting the width to 8 feet could reduce the price by roughly $20,000, and removing the asphalt paving could cut another $30,000 to $40,000 from the price tag, while rerouting the trail from the Trumbauer Road bridge over a stream would also lower the price, Dingman said.

“If you did all of those options, including the trail relocation and not doing the stream crossing, you may get a project in the $250,000 range, versus rebidding what we have already designed, something in the $380,000 range,” he said.

Township Manager Rob Ford said the township has already secured $100,000 in grant funds from Montgomery County for the trail project, and said he would look into the grant requirements for when the project must be finished or underway.

The supervisors directed Ford to look for other grant opportunities, and whether the grant funding could be used on a split-out or smaller trail project than originally envisioned.

“I think they’d rather see a reduced trail making the connection there, than us keep the ten-foot trail with all the bells and whistles, but doing fewer feet,” he said.

Wilson suggested a deadline of the end of the year to find more grant funding, so talks on the trail project can resume as staff and the board discuss and finalize the 2018 township budget.

Residents with questions about the pipeline project are encouraged to call TMA at 215-8558165. Towamencin’s board of supervisors next meets at 7:30 p.m. on June 14 at the township administration building, 1090 Troxel Road. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www. Towamencin.org.