We hope everyone had a great summer. It’s not over yet, but the leaves are changing, so we know fall is upon us. Here is a minor update about the current road construction, which will occur in the spring/summer of 2025.
If you live in front of the roads that will be resurfaced in 2024 or 2025 (please refer to the map in the attached notice), then you could choose to have a plumbing contractor televise your sewer lateral to see if there are any repairs that would be needed under, or near, the road.
This could save the property owner on the cost of repairing your sewer lateral as you would not have to pay the cost of repaving the roadway. It would also help the road last longer by avoiding cuts to the road.
A sewer lateral is the private pipe that all of the drain lines in a home connect to. The lateral then connects to the public sanitary main. The Township is responsible for the sanitary main. The property owner is responsible for the sanitary lateral from your home to the main.
Generally speaking, the water main is installed on one side of the road and the sanitary main is installed on the other side of the road.
Therefore, homes on one side of the road have sanitary sewer laterals that go under the road and before they connect to the sanitary main. These are the homes that would benefit by making repairs to their sanitary lateral under, or near, the road.
If individual property owners send me an email ([email protected]), I can tell them if their lateral goes under the road or not. We also have sanitary sewer cards that record the location of each property’s sewer lateral. We have cards for the vast majority of properties, but not all of them.
If a repair is needed under/near the road, the property owner would schedule a contractor to complete the repair prior to the milling or crushing work occurring (i.e. when the Township’s contractor comes to remove or crush the existing asphalt). The property owner’s contractor will want to complete the repair before the Township’s contractor removes the road as our contractor will need to pave the first layer of asphalt ASAP as we want to avoid the soils from getting wet if possible. Therefore, it is not uncommon for the Township to pave 1-5 days after removing the road, which doesn’t leave enough time for the property owner’s contractor to perform their work.
The property owner’s contractor will then place some compacted gravel or asphalt millings where they cut out the road as a temporary road surface until the roadwork begins. Then the Township’s contractor will complete the road work.
For your convenience, the attachment is shown below in full. PDF download is available here.
If you have further questions, please reach out to Meridian Township and/or Dan Opsommer directly, as he would be happy to answer any questions and concerns that you may have!