MOUNTAIN — Lake Placid’s big dig is just about done. The buildup for years in advance made it sound like replacing the sewer main beneath Main Street downtown would be a lot more painful for the general public than it seems to have been in the end. Granted, we’re sure some businesses felt the impact of lost foot traffic and parking, but it could have been a heck of a lot worse, and now it’s wrapping up before the heart of the summer season. Getting the project done on time is huge.

To recap: The sewer main has been replaced between Saranac Avenue and Mid’s Park, and from the park to the other end of downtown it has been slip-lined, which essentially means the inside of the pipe is new without having to dig it up.

This means that the sewer main should no longer leak into Mirror Lake, which is great news for the health of this village’s central body of water. Swimmers, paddlers, fish and aquatic plants are all better off as a result.

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MOUNTAIN — Speaking of projects getting done on schedule, we are glad to see that Adirondack Health’s new Lake Placid building is well underway and expected to be done this fall. Costs have risen, as they do, but overall, the news is exciting.

This new facility on Old Military Road will replace the old Placid Memorial Hospital building nearby on Church Street. It’s expected to have many of the same departments plus a large fitness center, available to both patients and the public through a membership program. The old hospital property will revert to the town of North Elba for some public-benefit use.

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MOUNTAIN — to a big turnout of people Thursday for Saranac Lake’s Art Walk, the first of four each summer, held on the third Thursday of each month from June to September. Granted, the weather was glorious, but it always makes us feel good to see a crowd on the streets of beautiful downtown Saranac Lake.

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MOUNTAIN — to BOCES’ Adirondack Education Center in Saranac Lake, whose Building Trades class we featured in Tuesday’s paper. Every year these high schoolers build a wooden, solar-powered tiny house on a trailer base — an excellent teaching exercise because they get to learn about many aspects of construction, from carpentry to electrical to plumbing.

“Everything that’s in a real house is packed into this, so I can at least show them without taking them to a job site,” Building Trades instructor Clarence “Brock” Brockway said. “I don’t want them to learn to do just one little thing.”

It’s too bad there isn’t yet any local trade school beyond BOCES for future contractors to develop their skills further. Good contractors are always in demand locally. We’re glad North Country Community College is starting to work on the problem, with talk about a trade program in Ticonderoga. It’s a start.

Meanwhile, not all of these local BOCES students will go into construction trades after high school, but the skills they gain will be invaluable nonetheless.

“You guys are going to own a home one day,” Brockway said. “If they don’t do this for a living at least they can change out a switch, fix the waterline. When they do this, they see what’s in the walls.”