Kalispell briefing residents on South Meadows work

Facing two months of dug-up yards and roads in South Meadows, Kalispell officials will meet with residents tonight to try and prepare them for an upcoming project to improve stormwater drainage in their neighborhood.

“During construction it will look like a mess,” Susie Turner, Kalispell’s public works director, said.

“So we’ll walk residents through how construction will proceed, what kind of traffic delays they will have to be concerned with and give them points of contact.”

Tonight’s meeting is at 7 p.m. in the Kalispell Wastewater Treatment Plant conference room.

Turner said the city is finalizing construction documents, but work is on track to start in September. It’s expected to take about 60 days to complete. The $676,405 project was awarded to LHC Inc.

“That [award] lets us do more than we anticipated for this first phase of work. We’re really excited about the project. It will provide such an improvement in that area as far as stormwater conveyance goes,” Turner said.

The project is being paid for with money generated from the city’s annual stormwater assessments.

This first phase will be focused along Begg Park Drive, Bluestone Drive, Belmar Drive and South Meadows Drive. A second phase still being designed for next year would extend out along Garden Way, Darlington Drive and Bluestone Drive.

The project will install a new stormwater conveyance system in about half of the neighborhood.

The biggest expense is installing large-diameter underground mains to collect stormwater and transport it to a new hydrodynamic treatment device that will discharge into Ashley Creek.

Work also includes clearing clogged culverts, replacing collapsed culverts, installing new culverts, digging new roadside ditches and reopening ditches that were filled in by homeowners for parking.

The ditch and culvert system will feed water to the underground mains.

“A lot of ditches got filled in, so we’ll go in there and reclaim quite a few of those to promote positive drainage,” said Brandon Theis, a project manager with Robert Peccia & Associates.

The engineering firm designed the system and Theis will attend tonight’s meeting to help explain the project.

The new system will include strategic locations for homeowners to connect sump pumps. “People can still discharge to a ditch or their lawn, but if they want the full benefit of this system they can hire someone to make that final connection for them,” Theis said.

Theis stressed that the work is being done to improve stormwater conveyance in the neighborhood, not to mitigate its high groundwater. “This is not being put in place to lower the groundwater table, so people likely will still have high groundwater on their properties,” he said.

All of the work will be done on city right of way in and along the roadway. Construction may complicate life somewhat for residents.

“There will be large equipment, pipes installed down and across the roadways, detours at times and limited access at times,” Theis said.

“But one contractor requirement is to maintain access. It might be crude and primitive at times, but people will be able to get to homes. There are times when driveways will have to be shut down for short periods, but that will happen only after the contractor has given advance notice to those property owners.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.