By By MARY-ALLISON LANCASTER – Managing editor
Projects are underway with some nearing completion as the city of Brewton utility department continues on the sewer rehabilitation projects.
Residents living on Escambia Avenue have been working around a detour for several weeks to avoid the work involving the water main. According to Ray Madden, superintendent of utilities, that project should be completed in a little over a month.
Madden said that the water project consists of replacing all the cast iron pipes and cement pipes with eight-inch poly pipe. Once they are completed with the main, Madden said the crew will redo the service line.
Madden added that the utility department has just &#8220kicked off” the Martin Luther King project which falls under the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). That project will include replacing the pump station, upgrading it to a new system and replacing a substantial amount of the main and the service line to all the homes up to the right of way, Madden said.
To better prepare for the future, Madden, along with Russell Holland, engineer for CDG, asked the Brewton City Council last week to invest in a GIS mapping program that would be installed in the utility department's new video truck.
According to Holland, during several of the city's sewer rehab projects it was determined that there is a need for a detailed sewer map. GIS, which stands for Geographic Information System, is a digital database contouring system that combines maps with data and organizes the information using exact specifications. Madden said Tuesday that the computer and software for the database is already in place in the sewer video truck.
At the City Council meeting, the two men said that it would take approximately seven to nine months to capture data for the manholes throughout the city. The survey had captured at least 1,000 to 1,100 manholes throughout the city.
At a City Council meeting, the two men were seeking financial assistance for the services, which is estimated to cost around $180,000 to $200,000, and would include help from a team with Magnolia River Services.
By using GIS, Madden said it would allow the utility department to acquire a flow model of the sewer system &#8220that will tell us what we need to upgrade the system in certain areas to enhance growth.” The size and flow of a particular line could be determined with the systems. The system would work off the same system as the water and gas department.
Once all of the data has been put into ArcVue, all future projects would have data input placed in the bids to continuously update the database.
The City Council unanimously approved the ArcVue database project.