BANGOR, Maine — A large hole that opened up on Hammond Street early Tuesday will affect downtown traffic into Wednesday morning, but should be filled before the city’s New Year’s Eve festivities, according to officials.
The hole is located across the street from the post office near the historic courthouse.
Bangor Public Works director Dana Wardwell said the hole — which was roughly 8 or 9 feet deep, 30 feet long and 15 feet wide — was caused by a collapsed brick sewer line under the street.
Crews blocked off Hammond Street and assessed the damage Tuesday morning.
Wardwell said the failed section of sewer would be replaced by a modern pipe Tuesday afternoon, after which crews would dump “flowable fill” into the hole. That fill will need to settle overnight.
Wednesday morning, workers will start work to patch over the fill and lay down asphalt. Wardwell expected Hammond Street to reopen in the late morning on Wednesday, well before downtown New Year’s festivities are scheduled to start.
“It’s a brick sewer that was probably installed in the 1800s and it just gave way,” Wardwell said. “It happens.”
The public works director added that “this area will be closed [to traffic] until we get this repaired.”
According to data contained in the city’s geographic information system, there are about 291 miles of sanitary and stormwater sewer systems under Bangor’s streets. Of that total, about 15 miles are aged brick construction, similar to what failed on Hammond Street after about 150 years in operation. Most of that is under State and Main streets and the city’s older neighborhoods.
“Many areas of town were built after brick was no longer used, and many areas have had the brick sewer replaced through various separation and maintenance projects over the past few decades,” City Engineer John Theriault said Tuesday. “Roughly 15 miles of brick sewer remain, primarily in the oldest neighborhoods in town. While old, not all of it is in poor condition, though much is.”
Some sections of that pipe date back to the Civil War-era or late 19th century.
Wardwell said these sorts of failures are expected with brick sewer lines that have seen up to a century and a half of use.
The city has been chipping away at the oldest sections of the sewer system, replacing the brick lines with modern pipes. There isn’t nearly enough funding available to do it all in one fell swoop, so the city has been taking it one project at a time.
The most recent example is West Market Square. While the aesthetic overhauls of the square were a major focus of the project, the more important changes happened beneath the surface — the replacement of old sewer and water lines that city officials believed were at a breaking point.
Traffic in the area of the Hammond Street hole is being diverted onto Court and Franklin streets until the work is complete, according to the city.