A contractor is upgrading storm water pipes this week and next week underneath Main Avenue in downtown Durango.
Rather than digging up the street to replace the pipes, AUI, a contractor from Albuquerque, is lining the pipes with a thick PVC material that will structurally reinforce them, City Operations Director Levi Lloyd said.
“It’s more robust than a plastic,” Lloyd said of the new lining.
The city expects to spend $280,000 to upgrade storm water pipes at all the intersections along Main Avenue from 12th Street to College Drive, he said.
The work will prevent storm sewer lines from deteriorating, which can increase the risk of sink holes, Lloyd said.
Construction will close lanes of traffic along Main Avenue, but work on each pipe should take only a few hours, Lloyd said.
The new lining should extend the life of the 12- and 18-inch pipes for 50 to 60 years. It is also about half the cost of digging up the street to replace the pipes.
Many of the existing pipes are clay, but some are corrugated metal and plastic, he said.
The storm-water pipe project is similar to a sewer pipe replacement the city completed last year along Narrow Gauge Avenue. But in that case, AUI broke apart the old clay and iron pipe with a bullet-shaped pneumatic hammer that pulled new high-density polyethylene pipe behind it.
The city is lining the storm water pipes underneath Main Avenue in preparation for repaving the street. The repavement project has not yet been scheduled and is at least a year or two into the future, Lloyd said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
