Whitaker Lane under construction

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CHRISTY LATTIN
CHRISTY LATTIN, clattin@lahontanvalleynews.com
May 11, 2008

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Whitaker Lane is about to be "all jacked up" for a couple of months.

The pavement will be removed from about seven blocks of Whitaker Lane on Monday to allow for the installation of large sewer pipes under the roadway.

City Engineer Larry White said the street will be under construction from Ranch Drive to the southern terminus of Whitaker Lane, just past Concord Avenue.

The street will remain open during construction, but work crews will close short sections, no more than a block at a time, as needed. Alternate routes will be available.

The street must be torn up because the large sewer lines will be installed at 12-feet to 18-feet deep. White said half the roadway will be torn up to create a trench deep enough, and wide enough, for workers to safely install the pipe.

Whitaker Lane is a main route to access several neighborhoods in the area near Laura Mills Park. Because of that, emergency services, the school district and residents in the area were notified of the upcoming street closure. Construction will not stop during the heavy-traffic times of before school and after school, so parents are advised to find alternate routes to Lahontan Elementary School and the high school.

The new pipes are just a part of a much bigger sewer project, which includes a new lift station to replace an aging lift station at Whitaker and Fifth streets which malfunctioned last summer. That led to an accidental spill of 300,000 gallons of raw sewage into the New River Drain on the east side of the city.

The $2.5 million construction project, awarded to A&K Earthmovers, includes new gravity-fed sewer lines beneath Whitaker Lane from Fifth Street south to a point near the L Line Canal. A new sewer lift station has already been installed on the southwest corner of Lahontan Elementary School property, and a sewer force main will be built from that point east, crossing Taylor Street to South Maine Street. A gravity sewer line will head up Maine Street and through the Montgomery Mobile Home Park to an existing sewer line in the Bighorn Ranch subdivision.

White expects the work to continue through the summer until the first part of August.

One small benefit from the trouble of a torn up street will be the addition of curbs, gutters and sidewalks on the west side of Whitaker Lane after construction is complete.