PORT ANGELES — The City Council next month will consider approving a downtown storm water project that would put off paving First Street for a year.
The proposed Port Angeles project, which wouldn’t occur until early 2011, would involve tearing up a lane of First Street between Laurel and Valley streets.
If the City Council approves the project, which it is expected to consider doing at its May 4 meeting, Public Works and Utilities Director Glenn Cutler said he would hold off on repaving the road until the storm water work is done.
That project is expected to take between eight and 12 weeks.
The city was considering repaving the road in downtown this year, at the same time as Front Street. Both have not had a street overlay since the 1980s, said Steve Sperr, city deputy engineering director.
“We can hold off another year,” he said of First Street.
The city still plans to repave Front Street downtown this year after Labor Day.
Lauridsen Boulevard between the Tumwater Truck Route and L Street, and L Street between 18th Street and Lauridsen Boulevard also will be repaved, beginning as early as June 1, Sperr said.
The overlay projects are expected to cost about $1 million in city funds.
Front Street also is expected to get bike lanes after it is paved. Crosswalks will be repaired, he said.
First Street will get bike lanes when it is repaved.
The proposed storm water project would involve disconnecting roof drains from the sewer system along the road and creating a new storm water collection system.
The city’s Utility Advisory Committee voted at its April 13 meeting to recommend that the City Council approve the project.
The $1.5 million proposed project, which would be paid for by the National Park Service, is connected to the removal of the two Elwha River dams, a $350 million project that is the largest dam removal effort in the nation to date.
The park service would pay for repaving the lane that it digs up.
The park service has said that removing the dams will cause the groundwater level to rise, and therefore make the tribe’s septic tanks unusable.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe will be connected with the city’s sewer system by May 2011, about the time dam removal will begin.
The construction project, which would reduce the amount of storm water that flows into the sewers, would be intended to offset the tribe’s contribution of wastewater.
Previously, the park service planned to build a 430,000-gallon tank at 18th Street and Milwaukee Drive to offset the tribe’s effect on the sewer system.
At about $5.4 million, the cost of building the tank came in too high.
The tank — just like the 5-million-gallon tank that the city wants to acquire from Rayonier Inc. — would store sewage that would otherwise overflow into the harbor during heavy rainfall.
But unlike the tank the city wants, it would only have been intended to store the amount of sewage that the tribe would be adding to the system.
The park service is required to offset any problems caused by dam removal. That includes connecting the tribe to the city’s sewer system and ensuring that doesn’t add to the city’s sewage overflow problem.
The city estimated in 2005 that it would cost about $1.25 million to acquire Rayonier’s tank and the easements for the pipelines that would run to it, Sperr said. He said he didn’t have a more recent estimate.
The city also has considered disconnecting the sewer and storm water systems.
But it has concluded that disconnecting all storm water from the city’s sewers would cost at least $60 million, Sperr said.
The cost of acquiring and using the tank, along with all the infrastructure improvements that go with it, is estimated at $38 million. If the city couldn’t get the tank, a fall back plan to build a “wet weather” treatment plant would cost about $45 million, Sperr said.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.