Talk about wet work!
Park Slopers can expect three years of racket, road closures, and parking woes as workers dig up neighborhood streets to renovate aging city pipes below them.
The Department of Design and Construction’s water main–replacement project, called BED798, kicked off on Jan. 31, and will continue through the summer of 2021 as plumbing beneath roadways including St. Johns Place as well as parts of Baltic Street and Flatbush and Sixth avenues is revamped.
Workers will cut trenches through the asphalt between 7 am and 6 pm on Mondays through Fridays in order to lay new pipes ranging from eight to 72 inches in diameter, and local car owners should keep an eye out for fliers announcing temporary road closures and parking restrictions, according to agency spokesman Ian Michaels, who said all affected streets will remain accessible to pedestrians throughout the job.
Residential and commercial buildings on blocks where work is taking place will lose water service during certain periods, but the design-and-construction department will alert locals in advance, and any interruptions will be restored by the end of the work day during which they occur, Michaels said.
The pipe-replacement project also includes the installation of combined sewers, catch basins, and manholes, in addition to reconstructing a triangular pedestrian plaza bounded by Eighth Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, and St. Johns Place.
Similar work is underway on plumbing beneath Leonard Street in Williamsburg, and last week the design-and-construction department announced it would use an installation process called “slip lining” — in which new, smaller pipes are threaded through larger, older ones — to shave one year off the job, which will now finish in 2019 instead of 2020.
But that technique won’t work in Park Slope, Michaels said, because the pipes being replaced there are too bendy, making it difficult to insert new tubes inside them.
Any residents who want to contact the city about the water-main-replacement project in Park Slope can contact its community liason Niel Patel at (347) 889–5271 or bed79
