Starting Monday and continuing for the next three to four months, work will take place to enhance water flow near Newman Regional Health.
The current water main on West 12th between Chestnut and Grand dates back to 1926, but it’s getting torn out and replaced by 16- to 20-inch PVC pipe by mid-May, weather permitting. On KVOE’s Morning Show recently, City Engineer Jim Ubert said he expects construction work will start at 12th and Chestnut before moving west, and he is asking drivers to be patient. The reason? One-way traffic westbound around the construction zone.
Ubert says the repairs are needed because of the age of the current pipe and also because of the two major blowouts in the current construction zone last year — one outside the hospital in mid-March followed by one outside Emporia Christian School in mid-June. However, this project is part of a larger plan to enhance water flow all the way to southeast Emporia. It’s the third major waterline replacement project in west Emporia after a massive failure near 15th and Prairie in 2017. Upcoming projects over the next five years include redundancies near the Water Treatment Plant near 24th and Industrial and a transmission line from Newman Regional Health to Industrial Park III in southeast Emporia.
This process also follows last year’s work to replace the water main on West Ninth from Lawrence to Oak.