People living on, and motorists driving along, West Fifth Street will notice GUC crews and contractors blocking off part of the road for the next two to three months. They are replacing old steel gas mains with new polyethylene lines, as well as replacing aged service lines which run from those mains to customers’ meters.
“As these steel gas lines age, they can deteriorate and crack or break,” said Durk Tyson, Gas Systems Engineer. “We try to replace this piping before it becomes a safety or reliability issue for our customers. When we receive a report of a leak, we look into whether it’s an isolated issue and if it’s in our customers’ best interest to simply make a small repair, or to repair and then come back and replace whole sections of pipe. For this project, we felt it was best for our customers if we moved forward with replacing these pipes.”
“This project is an example of our ongoing efforts to ensure that we deliver natural gas via a system that is safe and reliable,” said Anthony Miller, Gas Systems Director.
Crews have completed similar work along East First Street and Rotary Avenue, allowing them to move forward onto this project along West Fifth Street from Bancroft Avenue to Roosevelt Avenue. Work on similar projects along West Third, West Fourth, and Nash Streets as well as West Village Drive have also been done over the past year, and work along Elm Street is underway.
“It can be a bit of an inconvenience to motorists and residents in the areas where we work,” said Tyson, “but we try to keep disruptions to our customers’ service to a minimum. That’s especially important because so many people depend on natural gas from GUC for efficiently heating their homes and water as well as cooking their meals.”
Traffic will continue to flow in both directions along Fifth Street, but with work being done on the South side of the street, lanes will be narrowed during construction. The work along West Fifth Street is expected to wrap up around the end of September.
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