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City council adopts five-year stormwater
plan
By
Pat Grubb
Seeking
to avoid debt financing, the city has set moderate goals
for its five-year stormwater capital improvement plan. Public
works director Grant Stewart laid out the plan at a public
hearing April 22 and said the city’s ability to proceed
with the plans would depend upon the level of support the
city receives from county, state and federal grant funding
sources. Developer contributions would also play a role.
A number of the stormwater projects would coincide with
previously planned street improvement projects. In all,
the five-year plan proposes to spend $785,000 on 11 separate
projects. Annual expenditures would range from a low of
$30,000 to a high of $230,000. Stewart said, “This
year we only recommend one funded project.” He was
referring to the expenditure of $100,000 proposed for 6th
Street, part of an already approved portion of the city’s
Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan.
Of the 11 projects, six are stormwater management portions
of larger street projects from the transportation plan.
Three projects would protect and enhance surface water quality
while two would divert surface and groundwater away from
the sanitary sewer.
Separately, Stewart presented council members with a proposal
to chipseal approximately three miles of city roads this
summer. The city has ten miles of chipsealed roads that
have not been re-surfaced since 1992. “We’re trying
to play catch-up,” Stewart said, pointing out that
chip-sealing generally only last six to eight years.
Whatcom County road crews would do the actual work at a
cost of $13,000 per mile or a total of just over $50,000
for the project. Stewart explained that economy of scale
allowed the county to purchase the chipseal materials at
less cost than the city could.
Some of the roads to be chipsealed, such as Hughes Avenue,
are “a maintenance fix – the road needs to be
reconstructed but we don’t have the money to do it,”
said Stewart.
Roads to be chipsealed include Bayview Avenue, Dodd Street,
Hughes Avenue, Pipeline Road, H Street Road, Vista Terrace
Avenue, E Street and Jerome, Jerome Street and 10th and
11th streets.
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