Pleasant Ridge approves projects for sewer lining, roadwork

PLEASANT RIDGE — The Pleasant Ridge City Commission approved two awards for future sewer and road projects.

At its Aug. 13 meeting, the commission approved the first bid award to Inland Waters Pollution Control Inc. in the amount of $111,000 for sewer lining.

“We’ve been doing sewer-lining work for close to 10 years now,” City Manager James Breuckman said during the meeting. “As we go through and clean and televise and inspect our sewers, we then also prioritize repairs to be made. Sewer lining … they put a liner on the inside of the sewer and it prolongs the life of the sewer greatly — basically like having a brand-new sewer inside the existing one. So it’s a very cost-effective way of maintaining our sewer system.”

The sewer-lining work will be done on sections of Elm Park Avenue, Kenberton Drive and Maplefield Road.

“The engineers go and they review the camera footage from when they inspect the sewers and just identify the sections or the segments that have defects or issues that need to be repaired using this process,” Breuckman said. “So, the remainder of the sewer (is) in fine shape. It doesn’t need to be lined.”

Mayor Bret Scott said Pleasant Ridge is fortunate to sit on a bed of sand, so the city doesn’t have major issues with its sewers.

“They don’t break often, but they do have a tendency to just need cleaning from the inside,” he said. “We have a regular maintenance schedule for all of our sewer lines in the city, and when we find one that requires more than just cleaning, then we use the liner to make sure that the flow is good.”

The commission also approved a pavement joint and crack sealing bid to Michigan Joint Sealing Inc. for $202,051.

The project will cover the next four years of cleaning and resealing the joints and minor cracks in city roads.

“All of our streets have been rebuilt, and now we’re getting to the point where Maplefield and Amherst and Cambridge, it’s been nearly 30 years. So they’re still fortunately in very good shape for being older streets,” Breuckman said. “Our most recent streets that were rebuilt were Norwich and Hanover … and those were from 2017 or ’18. So we’re getting close to 10 years on those as well.

“Joint and crack ceiling is something that can prolong the life of concrete streets,” he continued. “It’s where all the joints are in the street. There’s that little black strip of sort of rubber that’s put in there. This project will go and it removes any of the old (strip) that’s left over. In a lot of cases on some streets, it’s gone or it just wears (out) over the years. So, that can allow water and things to get into the cracks and can start to degrade the pavement quality. So, this project would redo that joint sealing for the entire city over the course of four years.”

The first phase for 2024 construction work will cost $61,426, and the costs for 2025-2027 are $47,167, $47,308 and $46,150, respectively.

“Our roads are in really good shape because, over the course of … 30 years, we tried to make sure that we cover or repair every road,” Scott said. “Our road repair cycle is very good.”