WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said the federal Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012, signed into law by President Barack Obama Friday, guarantees a source of funding for Phase 1 of the $17 million Route 187 Reconstruction which is slated to begin next year.
The $105 billion federal highway and transit bill is providing Massachusetts with $1.9 billion over the next two years, with $5.5 million earmarked for the city’s reconstruction of the Feeding Hills Road reconstruction effort.
The City of West Springfield is currently installing a new 24-inch pipeline that will run 4.5 miles connecting the well field and treatment plant on Shaker Road in Westfield to the West Springfield water distribution system. The existing 16 inch, cast-iron pipeline, installed in the 1930s, is being replaced with a 24-inch ductile iron pipeline. Much of that replacement is going cross country, but sections of that pipeline will be installed beneath Shaker, Pontoosic and Little roads.
Westfield and the state Department of Transportation have to wait until the West Springfield project is completed before the Route 187 reconstruction work can begin, perhaps as early as next spring.
“The concept is to let West Springfield dig it up, install a patch and that we’ll go in next year to do our portion,” Knapik said this morning. “There is an enormous amount of drainage improvements involved in the project. The design of this project began in 1998 and stalled for various reasons, but its back on track, the funding is in place, guaranteed.”
The city agreed to the West Springfield pipeline project with conditions requested by the City Council, including Ward 5 Councilor Richard E. Onofrey Jr. and At-large Councilor John J. Beltrandi III, pertaining to Pontoosic Road. Knapik said that the trench will be patched, then the road repaved curb-to-curb because the city just paved that road two years ago. The trench along Feeding Hills Road was be repaved with a permanent patch to provide a smooth surface until the road is reconstructed.
“At some point in the future we’ll do the Little River Road portion from Route 20 to the bridge, which includes extension of the city’s sewers,” Knapik said. “The bridge replacement is very complex, so it may take seven years to get it all done.”
City Engineer Mark Cressotti said that initially the project was to issue a contract for the entire Route 187 reconstruction, from Route 20 to the Agawam line. However, because of the scope of engineering and environmental work and the cost of the project, it was broken into three phases.
“When it was one project, most of the environmental work focused on the bridge and the Little River resource area,” Cressotti said.
The phased approach means that the environmental review and permitting process must also be separated into three segments. While the bridge segment is still the most complex, the substantial increase of the Feeding Hills Road drainage has pushed that review forward.
“We still have environmental issues,” Cressotti said this morning. “We’re going back and forth. We have a lot of work to do.”
The project is now under a federal timetable which means that while work may not begin in the spring of 2013, the project has to be advertised and a contractor identified by September of 2013, the end of the federal 2013 fiscal year.
“So, construction may not begin until the spring of 2014,” Cressotti said.
