Do not expect to drive or bicycle on Harry Howard Avenue between Washington and Paddock anytime soon. My prediction for the complete repair of Harry Howard Avenue at Underhill Pond is between two to three two months.
Yesterday afternoon, I came across an old-timer surveying the scene (as I was) who lives on Harry Howard just south of the inaccessible portion. He said that Harry Howard would "probably be closed all summer," and he should know. He told me that this was the third time in his lifetime that that portion of road had given out due to a "broken drain." He claimed that the first instance involved a car falling into a hole that had suddenly opened up in the street. "What year do you think that was?" I asked him. "Well, let's see," he pondered. "That musta been around 1969."
The pond's long and wide metal outlet pipe sits 6 to10 feet below the street, and the drains seen on both sides of the picture below likely lead to the outlet pipe. We ask a lot of that pipe. Underhill Pond, which may be spring fed, takes water directly from Oakdale Lake and from a stream through the woods south of the park. That stream and Oakdale's outlet are piped separately under 6th Street /Glenwood Boulevard. Those pipes can't last forever, either. No pipes, no matter their material, last forever. Who knows, maybe one or both of them are leaking right now. My guess is that Underhill Pond's outlet pipe had been leaking for a long time and the street finally had nothing to rest on but mud (or nothing). Thus, the formidable cracks.
If you take a close look at the closed off street in person, it appears that the asphalt in the center is heaved, though I could be mistaken. There are no apparent sinkholes or sunken areas, just lots of cracks in the inbound lane of traffic (away from the pond) and almost all of them in the direction of the street. The dark crack shown below is the one that probably got DPW's attention.
This is going to require major road reconstruction done by professionals, not DPW. Everything will have to be removed and replaced (under what distance of street?), likely including the pipe and what it rests on. What it looks like below right now is anyone's guess. The local old-timer assured me that Colarusso would be doing the work. "Here in Hudson, they just wait for things to break," were his last words to me. Now there's someone with local institutional knowledge we can trust!
I wouldn't be surprised if this emergency project were to cost us $500,000 or more. Half a mil, maybe more! It all depends on what length of the street, and what is under it, needs to be replaced. Nor would I be surprised if the Common Council would have to approve (find?) funds to get this emergency work approved. When will the contractor the city will have to hire be ready to begin work? Next week? Next month? Can the city even afford this? What do we sacrifice elsewhere by having to pay for this? "Sorry, no money for crosswalks this year!"
By 8pm yesterday even the sidewalk was closed off, as in NO PEDRESTRIAN ACCESS!
 |
| That's Rob Perry in the black jacket. He did not have his salmon colored slacks on yesterday. Crocs? Not sure. Probably, though! |
Meanwhile, across town, South 3rd Street continues to have serious structural issues that Rob Perry is doing his best to ignore, with his only effort being repeat patch jobs that don't hold up for more than a few months. There are currently two bad portions along the city's busy entrance and exit where there is never a shortage of enormous trucks rolling by, the area in the picture above being the worst of the two. (Perry was forced to replace two portions of the street in 2022, just five years after Colarusso repaved the street!) This failed portion of South 3rd has been patched by DPW three times in the past year and a half! The problem, as Mr. Perry admitted last week and 6 years ago (only after being asked about it both times!), is not on the surface of the street, it's two feet below the surface! Yet all he does is patch, patch, patch the crumbled surface. (It's not a cut on the skin, Mr. Perry! It's a broken bone! It's not a crack in a house wall that needs painting over, Mr. Perry! It's the faulty foundation of the house that needs to be replaced!)
How much is this going to cost us when Rob Perry finally decides that patching portions of South 3rd is no longer an option? When will he stop throwing good money at bad? When will the so-called Code & Infrastructure Committee know what Rob Perry's plans are for the extensive and expensive mess below South 3rd Street that he continues to be so mum about? Will the Common Council give him the money he needs to fix (replace) the problem with the foundation of the street that he was aware of and that he told Colarusso to pave over in 2017? Will the council just hope a similar situation never arises again and that Mr. Perry does a better job of paying attention and using the city's money more wisely? Or will there be no in-depth discussion, as was the case at last week's Code & Infrastructure Committee meeting?
 |
| Ready for another patch! It's been 4 or 5 months since the last one! What foundation problem? What rough street that is never fixed? |
No comments:
Post a Comment