By Tom Blodgett
Mail |
Twitter: @sp_blodgett

Gilbert Town Council will be asked Tuesday night to put an end to an 18-month delay for a critical sewer rehabilitation project by choosing an approach for the town to access the line. 

At stake is land of 24 homeowners whose properties on Hemlock Avenue, Commerce Avenue and Honeysuckle Lane back to the Western Canal corridor between Burke Street and Lindsay Road, where the sewer and other public utility lines are deemed to be deteriorating. 

The project, coded WW1060 in the town’s capital improvement plan, calls for concrete pipe gravity sewer rehabilitation. 

The project is to fix a deteriorating section of 36-inch sewer pipe that runs along the Western Canal, about 20 feet below ground, on land that is owned by the residents but for which the town and electric utility Salt River Project have easements — a legal right to cross or otherwise access someone’s land for a specified purpose. 

Most of the homeowners had extended their fencing in the past 30 to 40-plus years to include the easements, for which they were paying property taxes, in their yards. 

Council approved moving ahead with land acquisitions from property owners in November 2020 and first contacted homeowners the following month, setting off an uproar that eventually caused the town to pause the project in May 2021. 

Town's options

Since then, the town reviewed different options that have been narrowed to five feasible ones from which council will choose Tuesday: 

1. Acquiring the easement property from homeowners and relocating their fences, the method the town was pursuing in 2020; 
2. Installing gates in each property to create an alley within the back yards of the properties where the easement exists so the residents would retain ownership, but crews could travel along the alignment of the pipelines to complete maintenance, inspection, rehab efforts; 
3. Acquiring just the property around seven manholes that are located inside some homeowners’ back yards; 
4. Installing gates at the seven properties that have manholes in their back yards to provide greater access for town equipment to get into those yards, while having homeowners clear any encroachments — sheds, trees, concrete slabs — to that manhole access; 
5. And installing gates to the manhole properties, plus rerouting an 18-inch reclaimed water line outside the corridor and into adjacent streets, an option the homeowners requested the town study. 

The fifth option is estimated to be the most expensive at $21.55 million because of the relocation of the reclaimed water line, followed by the first option at $20.48 million, driven mostly by larger land acquisition costs. The least expensive option would be the fourth, putting in gates at manhole properties, at $16.05 million. 

The town created on its website an interactive viewer that users could go to specific areas and see the five options and explore the construction sequencing and cost for each. 

Public Works Director Jessica Marlow said staff’s recommendation continues to be the first option to acquire the property because it allows for best access and visibility for maintenance of not only the sewer but the reclaimed water line and a 24-inch potable water line. The town has said it is concerned about the condition of all three lines. SRP also has overhead 230- and 500-kilovolt transmission lines overhead as a separate easement along the canal. 

“What this really comes down to is our ability to have visibility and access to this critical infrastructure,” Senior Project Manager Jason Montgomery said. “That's the intent here.”  

However, Marlow said the choice is council’s to make.  

Homeowners have said that any of the other options is preferable to losing a large chunk of their property. Homeowners would have to surrender from 7 to 26 feet back of their property under the first option, though they would be compensated for it and no longer have to pay property taxes on it. 

Risk of failure

Town Engineer David Fabiano acknowledged that many of the homeowners have done the right things over the years as they expanded their yards or built on them, seeking proper permits. 

“This (the Western Canal area) is the superhighway of utility use from the town's perspective,” he said. “And we've got people living right on top of it. It's not an appropriate way to do it. It's a bad practice that should not have happened. We’d love to be able to turn back the clock … but we can't do it. What we can do is go forward and do the very best that we can to assuage and cure all the deficiencies and errors that the town made.” 

Town officials said they are concerned about the possibility of the infrastructure failing and the damage it would do to the adjacent properties and utilities and how it would affect services. As examples, officials use a Freestone Park line collapse and a sinkhole from an underground utility line collapse that happened in 2016 on Greenfield Road. They also point to the 24-inch water-line break in Tempe that closed the U.S. 60 at McClintock Road for three weeks in May.

Such occurrences can be expensive and affect services, sometimes beyond the utility line itself, officials said.  

The Greenfield Road sinkhole affected not only utility service, but closing the road affected nearby transportation to nearby schools and town emergency response, officials said. A break in a water line would affect service but also potentially water pressure at homes and in fighting fires. A sewer line break can be an environmental disaster. 

“The point is that something like this happens, it's not just water service that’s impacted,” Wastewater Manager Ken Snow said. “You have propagating issues, a butterfly effect that happens. One form of one failure impacts multiple forms of governance. So sewer, water, electric, academic, trash, medical security, transportation and logistics, including things like food. These are all forms of governance that you have to have in place.” 

The utility line that failed and caused the Greenfield Road sinkhole was 16 years old, Snow said. The lines on the Western Canal are closer to 35 years old. 

Snow said he is concerned about the condition of the pipe continuing to degrade and that impaired access from some of the option also could affect response. 

“We have to pay attention to the infrastructure,” he said. “We know if we neglect it, it will fail. It is not ‘if' — it's going to happen. We can do preventative things ahead of time. We can do the detection, but we're going to be responding to things. We have trained and certified operators. We have a lot of talent here in the town of Gilbert, but if we can't gain access to it, we're not going to be able to execute that repair, or our repair will be delayed, and it's going to be catastrophic to our community as a whole.” 

The town’s utility lines by the homeowners' properties service about 25,000 Gilbert residents, spokesperson Jennifer Harrison said. 

Fabiano said the wastewater team also shared its angst about how long the delay has been, during which time the pipeline has continued to degrade and could have moved into active failure since it was last inspected. 

“(But) we need to honor the homeowners and make sure that they are heard,” Snow said. “And you know, we do accept risk as a community as time goes on.” 

Moving ahead

Whatever option is used, once the town gets access, it will use an “in-place solution,” which involves using manholes to put a “cured-in-place pipe” sleeve inside the pipe to reinforce it, Montgomery said. 

Fabiano said the repairs will inconvenience the homeowners no matter what option is used, though the in-place solution minimizes excavation needed. 

“There's going to be all kinds of impacts, no matter what we do,” he said. “So the walls are going to end up having to come down just to do the rehabilitation. It's what gets put back and how it gets put back that are the pieces that will get worked out after the council shares their perspective and their decision.” 

Montgomery said after council makes its decision, staff will initiate the design to proceed with that option.  

He said the town is looking at starting construction about a year from the decision and completing it within two years from the decision. 

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert
@sp_blodgett

tblodgett@iniusa.org

Meet Tom
Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.

Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.

Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism. 

Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.  

Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).