Cookeville City Council will consider awarding a bid for a water line replacement project Thursday along Interstate Drive.
The replacement will take place from Humble Drive to Walnut Avenue. City Manager James Mills said the $1.6 million water line project sets up the resurfacing of Interstate Drive.
“What our goal here, big goal for us, is hopefully, we will be able to resurface next year, that whole segment,” Mills said. “That’s one of the busiest streets we have in the city. It’s got some significant bad spots in, and it’s got the dip on what I was talking about on the eastern end, and then we’ve got several bad places on the western end.”
Community Development Director Jon Ward said the city has paused talks with T-DOT regarding the Interstate Drive sidewalk project. The water line will go where the sidewalk will be constructed.
“They are trying to get the waterline installed before the sidewalk project comes through,” Ward said. “We were thinking about bidding at the end of June and maybe mid-July, and it will still take a month or so to get that going and if they would start the project on the east end and do that segment along Jefferson and fill in the rest of the segments on the east end of the project maybe, we would work out where we wouldn’t get the contractors in each others way.”
Water and Sewer Director Barry Turner said the project will replace a 10-inch cast iron line with a 10-inch ductile iron line.
Turner said hopefully, he will know next week how soon the contractor can begin replacing the waterline.
“We told him to go ahead and get shop drawings done so we can review those and get us an idea on how long it would take for materials, because it may take him a little while for materials, but concrete for the sidewalk he won’t have to wait,” Turner said. “He can blow and go, so we need to know that unknown.”
