The sewer system in Fridley, Minnesota is about to undergo a massive restoration project beginning next month.
Local newspaper the Sun Focus reports that the Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES) recently announced the project. The restoration work will begin next month and is expected to wrap up by September 2016.
The sewer repair work will affect Fridley Community Park and Plaza Park, among other areas.
The project’s citizen liaison, Tim O’Donnell, says the repair work is way overdue.
“Many of them are in the 50, 60, and 70-year-old range and were made of reinforced concrete and pipe back in that time frame,” O’Donnell said. “We are finding now that they are just falling apart. They are suffering high levels of corrosion on the inside of the pipe. We are really trying to target these areas in critical condition and restore them to a condition that will help them last for another 50 years.”
In addition to improving the sewer’s sanitation capabilities, the project will also help prevent groundwater and stormwater from entering the sewer.
MCES is hiring sewer repair contractor Lametti and Sons, Inc. for the job. Lametti and Sons will first install above ground waste water pumps in order to maintain sewer service during the repair work. The bulk of the repair work will involve a process known as cured-in-place-pipe (CIPP) lining, which involves inserting flexible, seamless new pipes into the existing pipes via manholes and sewers.
“We are using the existing sewer, even though it is damaged, as a mold to create a new pipe,” O’Donnell explained. Because the existing pipe will not be physically removed, the majority of the repair work will be contained in the local manhole sites.
“Once we have that set up, there is no flow going through the pipe and we can clean it, inspect it again, put the liner in and make sure the liner is working well,” he said. “Once the actual sewer repair is done then we can come back and do any restoration work that we need to do if we have to dig across streets or driveways or if we do any minor excavation in the park areas or any other landscape area. We will restore those back to the existing condition or better.”
The “trenchless” method as CIPP lining is sometimes referred to as is a cost effective and relatively quick way of repairing sewer pipes. It has been available for residential use since around 2000.