East Valley Water Work to Start This Week
By Ben Benton, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.
Jan. 6–DUNLAP, Tenn. — Contractors are expected to start work Monday on long-awaited waterline extensions on Sequatchie County’s East Valley Road, officials said.
Chattanooga-based Mayse Construction Co. will begin work first, said Philip Roberson, Dunlap’s Water Treatment Plant superintendent.
“They told us they would get the rest of their equipment over here … and they would probably start laying pipe Monday,” Mr. Roberson said late last week.
Pikeville, Tenn.-based Roy Joe Angel Construction Co., the second contractor on the project, will begin work late this month or in early February, he said.
City officials say the $2.9 million project will extend public water to about 140 homes on the east side of the Sequatchie Valley, where residents have complained for years of bad wells and short water supplies.
New lines will extend from near the Marion County line north almost to the Bledsoe County line, officials said. Crews will build a 500,000-gallon storage tank and refurbish a 1 million-gallon tank, officials said.
One of the first homes on the project’s path belongs to Mava Allen, who lives on U.S. Highway 127.
Mrs. Allen said her well went dry in 2005 for the first time in 44 years. She’s been using a tank to store water from a nearby cave where the water is tasty, plentiful and cheap, she said.
“I will hook on, but I don’t think I’ll use it as long as I’m doing OK with the cave water,” Mrs. Allen said.
But most East Valley Road residents desperately need public water, she said.
“I think it’s great,” Mrs. Allen said of the extensions.
Mr. Roberson said contracted work should be finished within the calendar year.
Dunlap field superintendent Clayton Smith said the two-contractor approach “will speed it up a lot.”
Mayse Construction and Roy Joe Angel Construction each have separate contracts with the city, Mr. Smith said.
“It’s a control factor to do it this way,” Mr. Smith said. The project is easier to manage when the work is broken down into parts, he said.
He said the general plan was for the two contractors to aim for the same completion date.
“If they both get finished about the same time, that would be wonderful,” he said.
E-mail Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com
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