Cookeville set to begin work to replace waterlines through the north side of the city and extend sewer lines on Ridgedale Drive.
Cookeville Water Quality Control Director Barry Turner said more than 4,000 feet of waterlines with two-inch and six-inch galvanized waterlines around Kenway Street, Sharon Avenue, Massa Avenue, and portions of Linnaeus Avenue. The low bid for the project was an estimated $550,000. Turner said that was higher than expected.
“We did have two bids, and the low bid was quite a bit less than the other contractor,” Turner said. “So we felt, based on times that it was reasonable, so we did award the project.”
Turner said residents have experienced leaks and rusty water in those areas due to the age of the current lines. Turner said the city tries to do some waterline rehab work every year.
“We had a project last year where we replaced galvanized,” Turner said. “We’ve got one that is just getting started in Green Acres, where they are replacing some galvanized and anticipate this one to start about the time the other one would finish up. So it’s just something that we have to do to make our system better.”
Turner said the project will not begin till the start of the new year. Turner said residents may experience brief water outages throughout the project.
“Most people will only experience a short outage where we convert them over from the old line to the new line,” Turner said. “You know, so it will be a period of maybe three hours for each house, and it won’t be all the houses at the same time.”
The Ridgedale Drive sewer project will extend low-pressure sewer lines to 26 parcels on the southern end of the street. Turner said the project will not require cutting the street, which was repaved last year.
“Most of the sewer line is small in diameter, I think the largest is like four inches on this, so we use directional drilling,” Turner said. “You may have seen some of the equipment before on the side of the road. There’s a lot of electric, gas, and water that gets installed that way where they just drill under and hook to the pipe and pull it back through the ditch.”
The low bid for the project was an estimated $313,500. Turner said this project will also not begin till January.