Water main replacement beginning in Johnsburg this week

Residents on Johnsburg’s Prairie Path Water Company system should not expect extended service interruptions when the company begins replacing two water mains next week, a company official said.

“No boil orders and no extended outages” are expected during the main replacements, said Justin Kersey, Prairie Path’s president.

Some Johnsburg residents have complained about discolored water from Prairie Path for several years, including frequent boil orders from the privately owned water system.

“For homes directly around where we are replacing the mains it may improve those issues,” Kersey said.

A total of 19 homes adjacent to the new mains will also receive new service lines to their shut-off valve as part of the project, he said. A total of 2,000 feet of water line is included in the project.

One village road repaving project, on Brorson Lane, will be delayed to allow Prairie Path to do boring for the project, said Vinny Lamontagna, Johnsburg’s assistant village administrator. The repaving will continue once the water line is done, Lamontagna said.

Water mains will be replaced on potions of Brorson Lane, Sudeenew Drive, Channel Beach Avenue, Riverview Drive and Lakeview Street, Kersey said.

On the Riverview and Channel Beach area section, an undersized 2-inch main will be replaced with a 4-inch main, Kersey said. The section on Brorson and Sudeenew is a 4-inch main now and will be replaced with 6-inch water main pipe, he said.

Some property owners in the Brorson Lane and Sudeenew Drive section may experience short service interruptions as lines are moved from behind homes to the right of way along the street, he said.

Prairie Path worked with residents to determine if interior plumbing would need to be moved as part of the project, he said.

“The current plan is to bore the new service from the front of the home and tie in to the rear of the home, which is where the existing service enters,” Kersey said.

If contractors are unable to bore the new line because of septic or other obstacles, “we will move the internal plumbing from the rear of the home to the front of the home to make the connection there, at no cost to the homeowner,” he said.

The two sections were identified as needing replacement because of frequent breaks in the system, Kersey said.

“We can pinpoint which mains and service lines have broken” recently, Kersey said. “We plug in the location and when we develop the capital plan, we know this certain area has had two or three breaks over the last year,” he said.

Prairie Path continues its water age study, determining where the system has dead ends, Kersey said. In those sections, water may lay stagnant instead of looping through the pipes, causing the discoloration.

“The water age study may help steer us in a better direction” for future capital improvements, he said

Work on the water main replacements should begin the week of Sept. 12 and are scheduled to finish up in early to late November, Kersey said.