A significant project by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority is set to close parts of West Rosemary Street for roughly 18 months starting this fall.
The focus of the West Rosemary project is replacing a water main line that’s more than 80 years old. OWASA Capital Project Manager Darren Berger says the Chapel Hill-Carrboro agency has maintained the line for roughly 50 of those years, which included several repairs over the decades.
“But over the last six years,” he says, “we’ve made three repairs – with two of those repairs being made in 2019 and the third being in 2022. That averages out to one [break] every two years, but the line itself [needs replacement] once they start breaking, they tend to break more often.”
With that, the agency is preparing to replace more than 3,500 feet of the ductile iron pipe running the length of the road from the Carrboro town line to Chapel Hill’s Columbia Street. The project mirrors similar infrastructure work done by OWASA during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a water line running the length of West Cameron Avenue completely replaced across two years.
Katie Hall, the public information officer for OWASA, says that scale and length of project will be disruptive to the area – including brief interruptions for the customers once a temporary water line is established before the main line is taken offline. But the agency’s leaders believe it makes sense to get started on the road work now. According to OWASA’s prioritization model – which projects both the likelihood of failure and consequences – the main is at Level 4 out of 5 of risk for failure.
“By going ahead and replacing it before we begin seeing a series of water main and water line breaks,” Hall says, “we’re avoiding a lot of those situations where businesses could be impacted by the loss of access to their water.”
A map of the West Rosemary Street water main replacement project by OWASA, showing which parking areas in the corridor will be affected by phased closures. (Photo via the Orange Water and Sewer Authority.)
OWASA held a community meeting for the businesses and residents along West Rosemary Street that will be most affected by the construction on June 18. According to Hall, the utility agency, Town of Chapel Hill and other local stakeholders will be working with those people to help redirect and recommend parking at different locations within half a mile, depending on how each customer is affected once the work begins.
Critically, the entire length of West Rosemary Street will never be fully closed. OWASA’s contractors will break up the work into several phases, Hall says, replacing the main two to three blocks at a time with each closure taking a few months to complete before moving to the next.
“The entire road will be blocked off, section by section,” says the public information officer. “Pedestrian traffic will be routed around the section being worked on at that time, vehicle [and bicycle] traffic will be detoured around that section, and parking will be affected in some cases.”
Some of the finer details of the West Rosemary Street project are still unclear, as OWASA is finalizing its selection of contractor bids. Berger says the agency’s staff is bringing its recommendations to the Board of Directors at its July meeting. After that, more details on how and where each phase of road work will take place will be shared – and, Hall says, a meeting for the public will be held to further alert Chapel Hill.
As further plans emerge – and as OWASA works on the project – the agency is asking people to share their feedback and questions. But the main thing Berger recommends to the community is recognizing the closures and disruption will not be permanent.
“Just please be patient with us,” he asks. “As the old saying goes, ‘you have to break a lot of eggs to make a cake.’ It’s a temporary inconvenience, but we will be done in a short amount of time…in the big picture.”
Featured photo via Orange Water and Sewer Authority.
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