Bangor is looking to replace 130-year-old underground water and sewer pipes and upgrade a stretch of Main Street in the process.
The city needs to replace water and sewer pipes, stormwater drains and catch basins that run under Main Street and have needed frequent maintenance and repairs for years, according to Jefferson Davis, Bangor’s engineering director.
Davis believes most of the underground infrastructure that runs under Main Street between Water and Broad streets was built in the 1880s and 1890s.
“Some of that section is post-Civil War brick mains,” Davis said. “It’s some of the oldest in the city that needs to be repaired.”
If the city moves forward with these plans, it would address a stretch of road in the heart of downtown Bangor that has seen repeated damaging and costly water main breaks in recent years. It could also incorporate some recommended streetscape improvements that aim to make the downtown safer and easier to navigate.
Most recently, on Feb. 19, a water main break in that stretch of Main Street flooded the basements of several businesses. The damage extended from Nocturnem Draft Haus at 56 Main St. to at least Treworgy & Baldacci at 46 Main St., Assistant Bangor Fire Chief Chandler Corriveau said at the time.
The city has discussed the need to replace and improve underground water and sewer mains and stormwater drains for years, Davis said, but this seems like “the perfect opportunity,” because grants from the Maine Department of Transportation could help pay for some of the project.
Amanda Millay, Bangor’s director of water quality management, said some of the city’s oldest sewers, made of bricks and mortar, are “in beautiful condition” while others have crumbled.
Some of these aging sewer lines, including those along Main Street, weren’t designed to allow modern-day inspection equipment to pass through, so the city doesn’t know how well they’ve held up.
When that infrastructure work begins, Davis said crews can set up temporary sewer bypasses so the homes and businesses in that stretch never lose sewer access. Water mains can also be replaced in stages, so tenants only lose access to water for a few hours at a time rather than days.
When it’s time to rebuild the road, the city hopes to use federal grant dollars to make necessary improvements to the road and sidewalks, as well as make that stretch of Main Street safer.
Those changes could include adding bicycle lanes, changing angled parking to parallel parking, improving street lighting, planting trees along the sidewalks and adding bicycle racks and benches.
The improvements would be the first phase of Bangor’s Village Partnership Initiative, a program that allows communities to partner with the Maine DOT to spruce up their downtowns using federal funding. The goal of the project is to reduce congestion downtown and make the area safer, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists.
The city enlisted the help of Sewall, a Bangor-based engineering firm, and Viewshed, a landscape architectural company from Yarmouth, for the project.
Earlier this month, the companies released final recommendations for how to make downtown Bangor safer after studying the area for more than a year and gathering feedback from residents.
If the city made all the recommended changes and improvements, the total cost for the project would be roughly $54 million, according to Jodi O’Neal, a project manager at Sewell. However, 90 percent of the cost could be covered by grants, leaving Bangor to chip in the final 10 percent.
“It’s an area that has been talked about for years and this seems like the perfect opportunity to have the DOT pay for some of it,” Davis said.
Davis hasn’t yet determined when the first phase of the project might take place or how much the improvements will cost. Those details will likely be brought to the City Council’s Infrastructure Committee next month.