OCWA, Central New York's water authority, and its contractors are beginning field work for two projects that will build transmission lines parallel to existing lines in the areas of Clay, Cicero, and portions of Oswego County.
"What these parallel mains are going to do is allow us to provide additional capacity," Jeff Brown, executive director of OCWA, said. "We are projecting regional growth. It's not just Micron. We are projecting other folks to come into the community, other businesses, other workers"
Brown spoke at a Wednesday morning press conference at OCWA headquarters at 200 Northern Concourse in the town of Salina.
As Brown put it, these are "water-infrastructure projects that are not only going to decrease redundancy for our existing customers, but also provide for future growth."
Each is a multi-year project, he noted.
The two projects include the eastern branch transmission main, which extends from the OCWA facility across from the former Great Northern Mall on Route 31 to an area just past the Clay campus of Micron Technology Inc. and the Cicero border. The second project involves a parallel main for the clear water parallel transmission main. It extends from that same OCWA facility on Route 31 all the way up to an OCWA treatment plant in the town of Oswego.
That project is broken down into two components. OCWA will have people working on the projects on Wednesday, Smith said.
"Our intent here today is to let people know there are going to be people working in areas that they have not seen people working before, so we want to make sure that they're aware of that. They are working directly for OCWA. It is the preliminary part of the design," Brown told reporters.
He added that OCWA will need to design these parallel transmission mains, so it needs to observe the site conditions. As both projects continue, the authority will be doing some utility marking, land surveying and staking, soil boring, archaeological surveying, and some brush clearing.
"Letters will be going out here in the next two weeks, so we are actually reaching out to every impacted property owner," Brown said. "We estimate that there's roughly 275 property owners that are going to be directly impacted. A number more will see activities in the general area, so we're intending to send out anywhere between 350 to 400 letters to property owners to let them exactly what is going to happen."
OCWA has several ways that people can keep tabs on the projects' timelines. They can call (315) 455-7061, ext. 3159; email projects@ocwa.org; or check the website at www.ocwa.org/capital-improvements/
