Crawfordsville discusses water project

    The Crawfordsville City Council discussed the new water mains that are being installed in town during its regular meeting Tuesday night. Jim Zieglowsky was at the meeting and spoke on behalf of Cornerstone Excavating, the company that is putting in the water mains.

    Cornerstone Excavating bid $382,000 to replace approximately half the water mains in Crawfordsville. Part of the bid included time spent searching for the existing water mains, because there was no map of the town?s water mains when the project began. When Cornerstone bid on the project, it estimated that it would spend 40 man-hours simply searching for the existing main. At Tuesday?s meeting, Zieglowsky said that they might spend twice the time they originally estimated and wanted that to be reflected in the final bill.

    ?We try to keep the amount of time we spend excavating to a minimum, but 40 hours is probably not going to be sufficient,? said Zieglowsky.

    In the process of installing the water mains, Cornerstone has struck existing water lines on four separate instances on three different days. When the water lines were struck, water has leaked out and lowered the water pressure, which prompted the city to issue a boil order on those three days. Zieglowsky told the council that he doesn?t like spending so much time on excavation, but said it was necessary to avoid these kinds of water line ruptures.  

For more, see our March 3 print edition.