SV receives stimulus funds for projects

SPRING VALLEY — Good news: All three of Spring Valley’s planned water and sewer improvement projects have received federal stimulus funding.

Word of the funding came from the state on Friday, said Larry Good of Chamlin and Associates, the engineer working with the city on it sewer project plans. Good told the Spring Valley City Council Monday night that he’s since returned signed loan agreements for the project to Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the stimulus’ administrator.

Stimulus funds from IEPA are a 75 percent loan, offered at 0 percent interest over 20 years and a 25 percent grant, Good indicated. The funding is for about $5 million in sewer work and planning, Good said.

In August, the city council had awarded two projects in the plan – a $2.75 million combination sewer separation and an $800,000 replacement of the Ladd Road sewer line – to John Pohar & Sons of LaSalle. At that time, Conley Excavating of Morris was awarded the other project, a $600,000 water main rehabilitation.

Good said project contracts have been sent to both contractors, and preconstruction conferences for the projects will start “probably sometime around the middle of next week.”

Although Good said it’s not clear whether all three sewer projects would begin simultaneously, or whether the sewer separation project would require multiple construction seasons, he noted contractors for the projects are “anxious to get started” and “have indicated it’s their intention to start very quickly.”

The news follows an Oct. 22 backup of the Ladd Road sewer line on the city’s west end that blamed for a sewage flood in the basement of one home. The backup had prompted city sewer crews to do root cutting and sewer televising work along the Ladd Road line.  

Good told the BCR Monday that work on the Ladd Road sewer replacement project could start in as little as three weeks.

“It’s just a sewer replacement project, so they could start digging pretty much right away. There’s not much on that project to do but to start putting sewer in the ground,” Good said.  

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