Survey workers will be in some backyards soon

The city of Fairfield soon will undertake major renovations of the wastewater treatment system that will require it to obtain access to private property or in some cases to obtain the property itself.

To educate the public about the scope and length of this access, the city will hold a public open house from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Sept. 4 at city hall. Written comments may be submitted to the office of the City Clerk at 118 S. Main St., P.O. Box 850, Fairfield 52556.

The first step in this process is data collection of the existing sanitary sewer. The city?s engineering firm, French-Reneker-Associates Inc. will collect the data and may need to be on private property. These survey crews typically wear reflective yellow shirts and drive a white truck with French-Reneker-Associates decals.

Questions about the survey work can be directed to Melanie Carlson, project manager, or Jason Hull, survey manager, at 472-5145.

Carlson said French-Reneker employees started the survey work today. She said they will not be doing any digging or disturbing private property in any way other than walking on it.

The survey crews will look for manholes on the east side of town. They will open the manholes and measure how deep they are.

Their primary area of interest is an arc that starts at the wastewater treatment facility southeast of town to roughly the intersection of B Street and Kirkwood Avenue on the north side of town. The main the crews will investigate does not run directly from B Street to the wastewater plant but rather runs along the outskirts of town, going underneath Pleasant Plain Road and east of Chautauqua Park.

Carlson said her firm has the drawings from when the main was built. However, the actual main may be different from how it appears on the drawing, which is why the survey crews are performing this task.

French-Reneker sent a letter to 140 residents about the survey work and the need to access private property on the east side of town. Carlson said she doubts the company will need easements from 140 property owners, however. She said the company may choose to build the new sewer line within 100 or 200 feet of its preliminary drawing, and that in the end, the company will need easements from only about 80 property owners.

Survey work will continue for the next two weeks and may start up again some time later in the fall. Construction will not start until next spring, and then it will start only around the wastewater treatment facility. The bulk of the construction on the east side of town will start in spring 2015.

Carlson said survey workers will probably not be knocking on doors as they go from property to property because they will be traveling mostly through backyards where it is hard to tell who owns that parcel of land. She said residents should not hesitate to ask the survey workers questions.

After the survey work and open house, French-Reneker will decide upon a path for the new sewer interceptor, at which point it will begin contacting property owners along the route to ask for an easement. Carlson expects that to begin in October.