Council approves water line projects

DU QUOIN - Replacing deteriorating water and sewer lines is at the top of the to-do list for the City of Du Quoin in the weeks ahead.

The city council Monday at its regular meeting approved an ordinance authorizing an engineering contract for the Du Quoin Industrial Park water main loop and sewer extension. It also approved an ordinance authorizing an engineering contract for the replacement of the Madison Street water main and authorized expenditures to repair a sewer manhole.

Commissioner Chuck Genesio said Midwest Petroleum and Excavating of Benton will handle the manhole repair work at the intersection of East Park and Line streets. Cost of the project is $7,915.

Clarida and Ziegler Engineering of Marion was awarded both the water and sewer line extension contracts at the Industrial Park at a cost of $218,460 and the Madison Street project at a cost of $113,850. The latter covers 1,500 feet of 10-inch plastic pipe from Chip Banks Chevrolet Buick to the American Legion.

"We will pay for these projects with existing funds," Genesio said. "We have a lot of infrastructure problems in town, and Madison Street is certainly one of them."

Genesio said the problem is that it costs the city money to tear up the roads to get to leaks in the water and sewer lines. It then takes money to repair or replace those lines and then money to repair or replace the road once again.

"You can only oil and chip the roads so many times," Genesio said. "Eventually, you have to asphalt the roads and that is a lot more expensive. Everybody would love to have their streets asphalted. But you're probably looking at $50 a foot to have that work done."

That said, Genesio confirmed that some city streets are getting to the point where asphalting is about to become a necessity.

"It would cost us probably close to $13 million to asphalt every road in this town," he said. "And we obviously don't have that kind of money. We have to be prudent with how we use what money we have."<