Photo by Brent Addleman
Dan Guss, project manager for Uni-Tec, updates members of the Johnsonburg Municipal Authority on the Wastewater System Upgrade.

By Brent Addleman

Editor

Dan Guss, project manager for Uni-Tec Consulting Engineers Inc., provided the Johnsonburg Municipal Authority with an update on the Wastewater System Upgrade Project – Phase II during last night’s regularly-scheduled meeting at the authority’s offices.
The project is currently on schedule.
“You are on schedule and should be finishing ahead of the consent order schedule,” Guss said.
Currently, excavation has been taking place and trucks have been hauling away dirt and debris.
“They are basically digging and taking a lot of dirt off the site,” Guss said. “They are getting down to the lowest elevation in the excavation where they are putting what they call the yard pumping station which is where are all the sewage from the plant drains into that yard station. So it has to be the lowest point in the excavation. Then that gets all pumped back up into the plant.
“They took a lot of fill off site, they have more that is coming off. They were estimating another week or two of trucks taking fill off the site. At that point, they will be putting down reinforcing steel and pouring concrete slabs. Concrete trucks are not as heavy and they aren’t as much as they are hauling out for dirt.”
Work is scheduled to begin today on the bore that will go under the Clarion River.
“Right now they are putting the ram into the hole to start their bore under the river,” Guss said. “That should start [today.]”
Uni-Tech has been in contact with the Army Corp of Engineers regarding the water level of the Clarion River. When the project was first surveyed, less water was being released from East Branch Dam. Now, the water level is higher.
“We’ve had some discussion with the Army Corp of Engineers,” Guss said. “They’ve been opening up their dam to lower the lake level. They said they are going to cooperate. They will reduce the flow during the time when they are doing the bore.
“Otherwise, because the water is so high right now when we found the bank of the river when we did the survey, we had a certain length of bore we were going to put under the river. With the flow of the river as high as it has been when they’ve been lowering the pond on the dam, the bore would have been longer.
Had Uni-Tec officials needed to extend the length of the bore, the Authority would have been on the hook for a higher cost.
“It would have been a $40,000 item to make that bore longer to reach further across the river,” Guss said. “Right now, it looks like we are going to be good, keeping the river low.”
Guss also addressed concern over the Ridgway and Shawmut roads. A resident spoke out at last week’s Johnsonburg Borough Council meeting about the deteriorating state of the roads along with the speed and number of the trucks passing on the roadways.
Guss reported that McCrossin will inform borough council of truck traffic.
“One was they be given a weekly report of what the truck traffic is expected to be that week,” Guss said. “That has been arranged.”
In regards to the condition of the roads, McCrossin has agreed to a temporary fix.
“The contractor has agreed - and they talked to the borough about this - putting coal patch on some of those areas,” Guss said. “They probably don’t want to do any paving until they are finished running all the trucks through.”