Staff Writer

Old County Road has been noisy and dusty of late, all because of work that will stop it from being wet and smelly.

The tree-lined road between Winnock’s Neck Road and the Scarborough Marsh is now filled with construction crews building a new pumping station for the Scarborough Sanitary District.

Another project designed to alleviate the road’s drainage problems and repair a battered surface will begin Monday. The total cost for the two projects is at least $4 million.

“I’m looking forward to it being over. But I am also looking forward to it being straightened up,” said Sue Howard, who has lived in the neighborhood for 13 years.

Sanitary District Supervisor Gary Lorfano said work on the pumping station began last month and will cost $3.5 million, including engineering, permits and construction.

The new 1,200-square-foot station will replace two pumping stations, house a pump and generator and more efficiently pump wastewater to the district’s main facility on Black Point Road, Lorfano said.

The station will be located in the woods between Old County Road and the Coach Lantern apartment complex, Lorfano said. The project is expected to be finished by fall and is funded from district reserve funds.

Two current pumping stations at the bend of Old County Road and across the marsh on Eastern Road will both be dismantled. The pumping station on Eastern Road was built almost 50 years ago and handles flow for areas including Haigis Parkway, Eight Corners and Evergreen Farms.

The construction project includes a new pipe across the marsh area, which was installed through a process called “pipe bursting,” or inserting a new pipe through an existing one, Lorfano said.

With the pipe bursting completed, Lorfano said crews from Stillwater-based Sargent Corp. hope to get out of the way so workers from Gorham-based R.J. Grondin and Sons can begin road work next week.

The construction projects are linked because a pipe the sanitary district no longer needs will be used to drain storm water that now accumulates on Old County Road to the Nonesuch River, said Public Works Director Mike Shaw.

Stories of of poor drainage and its effects are rife. At a public meeting last December, residents told Shaw about flooded basements and sump pumps that inflate electric bills.

Jean Shorey said the crawl space under her house has never flooded, but recalled a visual reminder of how water refuses to flow from the road.

“One time I watched a little boy float a toy boat at the end of my driveway,” she said.

A new, drier road will be the finished product, but it also will alter the landscape on Old County Road with the removal of almost every oak and maple lining the center of the road.

“To try and build with the islands there, it would have been ridiculous,” Shaw said.

A new median with raised curbs and more breaks for vehicles to turn around will be built and new ash, oak and maple trees planted, Shaw said.

Howard anticipates getting more sun at her house and said there are good reasons to remove the trees.

“We have to accept that is part of the drainage problem,” she said.

The project was included in the fiscal year 2010 capital improvements bond with an estimated cost of $1.35 million. Seven bids were received for the job and none were higher than $1.13 million. The winning bid from R.J. Grondin was $783,000, and work on the road must be “substantially completed” by the end of July. 

Initial plans for the pumping station met skepticism last summer from residents who worried about added noise from a generator and possible odor problems based on smells that occasionally waft from the Eastern Road station. Lorfano said better construction and modern technology should filter sounds and smells.

Charlie and Linda Ouillette, working in their yard on Kimball Road last week, said they are more affected by the smell of the Eastern Road pumping station than standing water.

“Come August, we can smell it pretty good,” he said.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219