I think the roads are the roughest I've ever seen after spring breakup. We hauled 350 tons of stone to place in mudholes to make roads passable. We graded approximately 35 miles of road through the month of May. Most of the rock got covered with bank-run gravel. We had rock on Piper Hill, Hughes Road, South Hill, Fish Hatchery, Reed Road, Bear Rock Road. East Colebrook Road., and Russell Road.
We paved the areas we had dug through the winter for repairs to water and sewer lines. All the manholes on Hospital Road were uncovered so we could clean the sewer main. We also uncovered the manholes on the upper end of Spring Street and High Street
We cleaned the main sewer lines with the Jetta on Hospital Road, Monadnock Village, and across the swamp to Edwards Street. Edwards Street were cleaned from the top of the hill east to the pump station. High Street, and the upper end of Spring Street were cleaned. We had trouble on the end of Spring Street so we scheduled Granite State Rural Water to come in and televise the main line there. This was done at no cost to the town because we are a member of the association. The cost savings to us was about $7,500.00. A BIG thank you to the Granite State Rural Water Association.
The Mt. Of Demo's was held on the 22nd; took the people that work highway all winter to see the set up. This is a show sponsored by the NH Road Agent's Association. They put on live demonstrations of various highway projects; culvert lining, line painting, chloride application, cold patch usage, safety, signage etc. There are over 100 vendor booths with displays. The crew all got free safety vests that normally cost $37.00 each. The guys picked up a lot of valuable information to help them perform their duties.
We also had our required annual training for the Solid Waste Licenses in Berlin this year. There are three of us, Kevin McKinnon, Wally Laro, and Ron Giguerre.
The streets were all swept this month, and cross walk painting started.
The lawns have all been repaired where we dug them up from plowing this past winter. The ground didn't freeze this year and there was more to do than usual.
The trash cans are back out on Main Street and Ron Giguerre picks up the trash each week. Water, Sewer, and Landfill pumps are checked every day and all recordings written down. We pulled two sewer pumps to be rebuilt. Work will be done inhouse to save money.
The landfill pump system is running fine with maintenance an ongoing project. Trash placement is at an almost feverish pace to try and finish early this summer. There are about 6 to 8 weeks to go to capacity.The April round of groundwater sampling was done on schedule and results are back. The treatment plant has done a tremendous job of cleaning up the groundwater, contaminants are almost all within the prescribed limits.1-4-dioxane is the problematic contaminant now due to measuring down to parts per billion instead of the previous parts per million. This chemical was not detected until the more intense testing was required last year. We will be addressing the problem later this year as to what to do to treat this chemical. Sincerely, Kevin F. McKinnon PW Director |
