Street asphalt texture
The city has begun transitioning its old machines to new, smaller and easier-to-use equipment. “Down in the pits is two big grinders, and whenever the waste comes in, it grinds up whatever needs to be ground up, and then they have these floats that signal when the pump station needs to kick on and pump it all out,” Price said. “It saved money to put them in, back in the day, but not anymore.”Īnother aspect of the sewer system that has had recent updates is the sewer pump stations, which pump waste from homes in areas on downhill slopes up to the main sewage line, where it flows down to the city’s wastewater treatment facility. “So the guys can’t get the sewer eel or sewer jetter in there ,” she said. There are more than 80 of the smaller-manhole clean-out areas in addition to the 200 proper-sized ones. There are approximately 200 sewer manholes within the city limits.Īnother issue the city has faced is that, in some areas, instead of installing regular manholes, smaller “clean-out” manholes were installed sometime in the past. Price said the manholes are all at different depths, depending on where they lie in the sewer system. When they finish, “they’ve got them flush, level and concreted in, so we can just flip the lid and take care of what needs to be taken care of.” “When people see the guys out in the, that’s what we’re doing. Once the manhole has been detected and the asphalt has been removed, city maintenance employees use an apparatus called a “riser” to bring the manhole back up to street level. “If a sewer line backs up and anyone’s having problems, or we have a clog, we can’t get to them underneath the asphalt, so we have to go uncover them and then raise them up” Price said. Much like the water valve issue discussed in last week’s Times, many of the sewer manhole accesses in Gainesville were paved over sometime in the past when new asphalt overlays were added to the city streets. Most of those paved-over manholes are under 5 inches of asphalt, and city employees have to use a metal detector and jackhammer to find and uncover them whenever there’s an issue with the sewer in that area. Some parts of the city are not serviced by the sewer system in those areas, residences and businesses maintain their own septic tanks.īringing sewer manholes up to street level The city’s sewer system services some residences and businesses within the city limits but not all.
#Street asphalt texture series
In this final part of the Times’ three-part series about recent projects undertaken by the city of Gainesville, city water specialist Jessi Price describes updates that have been made to Gainesville’s sewer system and provides information on the city’s streets.