“The culvert basically carries the brook across the street. It was at a point where if we didn’t replace it soon, it would have at some time collapsed,” said Town of Trenton CAO Brian White. “The bottom line was that some sections were getting close to 100 years old.”
White said crews working are now in a stage where they are restoring the road, after completing work on an underlying culvert. He added that since late September, there has been water flowing through the replaced culvert.
White said the work on the culvert was completed about a week before the deadline set for it – Sept. 30.
“They’re basically just finalizing some of the catch basins and manholes, and restoring the street,” said White. “It’s more or less cleanup work that had to be completed after the major work was done.”
Although the remaining work on manholes and catch basins is only expected to take several more days, the next step – repaving the road – will take a little longer.
“The last piece of it will be the paving – and to some extent, they’ll need to leave it to settle for a bit,” said White.
Once crews apply a layer of gravel, it will need some time to settle before they apply a top layer of asphalt to complete the paving. This is done to prevent the formation of sinkholes.
“They need to do that, after they put it down on top of the gravel,” said White. “Once they have about 10 feet of gravel down in some sections, it naturally settles – it’s just a matter of letting it find its place.”
White anticipates the project will be entirely finished, and the road completely restored in that area, at the end of October.
Another reason the culvert on Main Street needed replacement, White added, was that a larger one was needed to accommodate the flow of more water.
“We took the opportunity that replacing the culvert provided, to build a larger one, to allow more water through there,” said White. “The culvert was built in sections, and as traffic increased over the years, they needed to widen the street to accommodate the traffic.”
