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Construction plans may delay Lake Placid’s Main Street sewer project

A worker with the Geomatics Land Surveying evaluates the elevation of various buildings along Main Street in downtown Lake Placid Wednesday. (Enterprise photo — Griffin Kelly)

LAKE PLACID — Some complications with manholes along Main Street could delay the downtown sewer replacement project this village has needed for years.

Earlier this year the village board announced that sewer lines beneath Main Street will be replaced and updated to protect Mirror Lake from sewage leaks and appease state orders issued by the Department of Environmental Conservation in 2004.

On April 2, a notice was put on the village website, saying, “Work is underway on the Main Street sewer project and will continue over the next two months. Some of the project’s work is weather dependent. Updates will be forthcoming as the project moves along.”

The Main Street project has three phases.

Firstly and already completed, a sewer line running underneath the High Peaks Resort and Lake House hotel was replaced and positioned higher in the ground so it would flow easily into a larger main pipe. This eliminated the need for a lift station, which would have pumped sewage upward and let gravity take it from there.

The second part is slip-lining a series of lateral lines from buildings along Main Street and the Mirror Lake waterfront. In a previous interview, Mayor Craig Randall described slip-lining as putting a sock in the pipe: It fills the line with a material that coats and strengthens the infrastructure.

“In effect, it gives you a brand-new pipe,” Randall said.

The slip-lining will not require any digging and cause minimal traffic issues, according to village Trustee Peter Holderied, who owns several businesses and commercial buildings in the part of Main Street where pipes will be slip-lined. He said that aspect should start in a week and take about two weeks to finish. The board originally wanted to get the slip-lining done in December, but it was too cold.

The final piece of the project will replace a sewer line that runs under the High Peaks Resort and the Lake House and down Main Street to Mid’s Park. This would require digging, cause traffic changes and possibly eliminate street parking from Saranac Avenue to Mid’s Park.

This is the part that could cause delays. Because Main Street is a state highway, every construction aspect needs to be approved by the state Department of Transportation. In late March the village board was informed of some changes in design and location to manholes that would run along the street, so now those plans need to get the go-ahead from DOT before the contractor, Schultz Construction, will begin making the new manholes.

“If this were a village street,” Randall said, “none of this would be a concern, but the fact that it’s a state highway puts another partner at the table.”

The initial plan was to start this construction in the third week of March and have it done by Memorial Day weekend in May before the rush of summer tourists; however, now neither Randall nor Holderied will commit to a timeline.

“It’s a real moving target of a project,” Randall said. “We will have more info a week from Friday, and we’ll keep the website updated as various parts of this project get back on the calendar. We have some concerns about the project delaying too long this spring. In Lake Placid, we have very narrow windows of time to get these things done before it starts to affect our businesses.”

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