Five of the city’s sewer failure projects have been completed, but there is still more work to be done, especially after the city’s contracted company has left town.
Public Works Director Jermaine Thornton told the Greenville City Council that Portland Utilities Construction Co., LLC, of Portland, Tennessee, completed five of the seven sewer failure projects.
However, the company recently pulled out for good.
“When they finished Wildwood (Drive), I had several conversations with them, they’re not coming back,” Thornton said. “They impressed that they were more of a pipe bursting company and they had been here longer than what they wanted to be.”
According to Thornton, one of the two projects the company had left in the 1200 Block of Goodrich Street, will be handled “in-house.” Both projects were bid at around $35,000 a piece.
Two sewer projects, one on South Delesseps Street and the intersection of Reed Road and Canal Avenue, were anticipated to be completed by Portland Utilities Construction as well.
“I think we need to act pretty quickly on this,” Mayor Errick Simmons said in light of the fact the sewer failure issue on Reed and Canal is the most dire.
Thornton told council members the work zone was safe and Canal Avenue is completely closed off to traffic at the end of Reed Road, giving little-to-no chance of incidents and a comfortable time frame to receive bids for the job.
“The longer a sewer failure stays out, the worse it will get,” Thornton said.
Ward 3 Councilman Bill Boykin looked at the situation as a lesson to be learned.
“If we had known about this three weeks ago, or four or five weeks ago, that they were going to pull out on us, at least we could’ve been working on this with somebody else,” he said.
Ward 6 Councilman James Wilson said he appreciated what the company did while they were in town, noting it managed to actually save the city money.
To get the ball rolling on continuing the projects, a motion was made by Ward 1 councilman Al Brock to receive bids for the Reed and Canal sewer failures, which was unanimously approved.
