ESCONDIDO — The city is replacing segments of a major sewer main that makeup nearly a mile of sewage pipeline.
The City Council approved an $8.4 million contract with Escondido-based Southland Paving, Inc. for the Trunk Sewer Replacement project at the Feb. 8 council meeting.
Escondido’s trunk sewer central system was built in 1959 and is integral to the city’s sewer infrastructure. Consisting of 24-inch and 27-inch reinforced concrete pipe with short sections of asbestos cement pipe, the trunk sewer main transports raw sewage from 40% of the city to the Hale Avenue Resource Recovery Facility (HARRF).
Over the last several years, extreme rain events have further degraded the aging pipeline, requiring emergency action to replace sections at risk of imminent failure.
The project will replace, upsize and realign 5,000 linear feet of the existing pipeline through mostly open trench construction.
The five segments to be replaced are between HARRF and the intersection at Quince Street and Norlak Avenue, said Angela Morrow, deputy director of Utilities/Construction and Engineering.
The first two sections to be replaced include 1,100 linear feet along Norlak Avenue and through the existing public works yard and 2,300 linear feet along North Hale Avenue between the intersections with Industrial Avenue and South Auto Park Way. The second section includes rerouting the new pipeline, so it no longer goes through the Acura and GMC dealership parking lots.
The third section includes replacing 820 linear feet along South Hale Avenue and within the Casa Grande Mobile Estates. The fourth section replaces 700 feet of pipeline from the same mobile home park across Harmony Grove Road and on the Escondido Church of God property.
A portion of the fourth section will also be rerouted so that a large chunk of the pipeline no longer goes through Casa Grande and instead goes through adjacent roads.
Portions of the pipeline in the fourth section were compromised during the severe rainstorms in mid-January. This emergency required the city to forgo routine bidding procedures to allow Southland Paving to start construction work in that area.
The fifth section will replace 90 feet of pipeline from the Green Tree Mobile Estates to the connection point at HARRF.
The project includes two additional consulting agreements, a $1.4 million contract with Arcadis U.S., Inc. for construction management services and a $155,560 contract with Infrastructure Engineering Corporation for engineering services.
