WESTFIELD – The Conservation Commission will oversee repairs to the outfall of the Little River drainage system to avoid delays in the next phase of the Route 187 improvements.
City Engineer Mark Cressotti appeared before the board earlier this week to discuss how the city will make repairs to the outfall structure of the Little River drainage system into the Westfield River.
The issue arose during the Conservation Commission’s review of the Notice of Intent (NOI) to upgrade the stormwater drainage system as part of the Phase 2 of the Route 197 improvements along Little River Road.
The $15 million Route 187 improvement work was broken into three phases because of the scope of work. Phase 1, the Feeding Hills Road improvements, are nearly complete and the state Department of Transportation is preparing to bid the contract for phase 2, Little River Road.
The final phase is the relocation and construction of a bridge over Great Brook. The present bridge, at the bottom of Pontoosic Road, will be demolished and a new bridge will be constructed north of that intersection, closer to Old Feeding Hills Road.
A public hearing on the NOI was attended by 50 residents at the commission’s Oct. 213 session to hear details of the road improvements, which include upgrading stormwater drainage.
The details of the Little River improvements were presented by Mary Trudeau, a wetland specialist with Benesch, a Glastonbury, Connecticut consulting engineering firm retained to design the $15 million Route 187 reconstruction project.
Trudeau said the design of the roadway drainage system is being changed to improve the outflow of water from the storm drains into the Westfield River. The present system collects stormwater which is then piped directly to an outfall on the river bank.
Trudeau said the existing solid drainage pipe to the outfall will be replaced and a new discharge pipe install along the same easement through a farmer’s field. The new pipe will have an 840-foot section of perforated pipe to allow infiltration of water into the soil as the stormwater flows toward the river.
Cressotti said the new stormwater line will be installed within the existing easement and, like the present line, access structures will be below surface level to allow the field to be tilled for agriculture. Cressotti said that work will have minor impact to the environmental resource area.
Cressotti said repairs to the headwall of the stormwater drainage outfall are being broken out of the Phase 2 improvements and will now be done by the city as maintenance.
“These are minor repairs, but if they were done as part of the Route 187 improvements, they would have to be reviewed and approved by the Army Corps of Engineers and the State Fish and Wildlife Natural Heritage agencies,” Cressotti said. “The time to do that would delay the Little River Road improvements.”
“We’re ready to bid that phase of the project this fall,” Cressotti said. “If we do the outfall headwall repairs as maintenance, we don’t need approval from those agencies, so it was decided that the city will make the repairs under the oversight of the Conservation Commission through an enforcement order.”
