Residents discuss Fairway Drive construction
Concerns voiced about width, ditches and cost
GRANT COUNTY - Fairway Drive residents want curbs for their road to replace the ditches planned as part of new construction.
Residents of Fairway Drive met with Grant County PUD commissioners, Grant County commissioners and the City of Moses Lake engineers Thursday night to discuss the changes in the road as related to a 340-home Sun Terrace project near Road F and Frontage Road.
The project would place an about 6-foot-wide ditch on either side of Fairway Drive from Westshore Drive to Road F.5 with the road being 17 feet wide in each lane.
Past Road F.5, the new development will have curbs and gutters, while the golf course side will still have a ditch. The road narrows to 14 feet wide in one lane and 17 feet wide on the other side, according to developers.
Toward the end of the road, it will narrow again to 14 feet wide in each lane with curbs and gutters on both sides of the road.
Derek Pohle, Grant County's director of public works, said the road is being rebuilt because when the developers place the utilities it will destroy the pavement. The development also will bring in more traffic, so the road needs to be wider and have a better surface.
Mick Hansen, Fairway Drive resident and moderator for the meeting, said there were a few problems with the plan for the road.
Public concerns
If people parked on both sides of the street at the end of the road, then it would narrow to about 12-feet-wide.
"So if you have a party and you have company, you're probably down to one way traffic going through there," Hansen said. "I feel we need at least 16 (feet) there at the very, very minimum to get traffic to flow."
Fire District No. 5's Fire Chief Roger Hansen said a 14-foot lane wouldn't be large enough to drive a tanker truck down the road if people park on the side of the road and a section of the road won't have fire hydrants.
"This is a (no hydrant) area other than for a few hydrants near the Eagle Park Reach," he said. "Any kind of structure fire, we're going to be running rigs up and down this road. A 14-foot (wide) lane is no problem as long as there's nobody parked on it. Who's going to enforce this no parking strip alongside the road? Believe me there'll be cars parked there."
The fire department doesn't assume there would be a hydrant in the area, so the tanker truck would come anyway, Roger Hansen said.
Mike Shannon, a resident of Fairway Drive, asked why did the road have to change dimensions. He said the city and the county needed to work together to develop a standard.
"That doesn't make sense," he said. "The kids got to get out of the separate sandboxes and play in the same one. Fairway Drive is just the same as Road F. It's going to carry just as much traffic."
PUD concerns
Another issue Hansen mentioned was the Grant County PUD would need to move some of the utility lines if ditches were built along the road. Tony Webb, the PUD's director of customer service, said it could cost the utility between $200,000 and $300,000 to move.
"If we didn't have ditches we wouldn't have (to move the lines)," he said. "What's going to impact the road work out there is it's going to take time for us to move the utilities. It really can't be paved we do that. Rough estimates it's probably going to take a couple of months."
The utility hadn't started moving the utilities yet, Webb said. They would try to minimize the impacts on the customers in the area. Cutting into the hub for the fiber could take about eight hours to restore, but the utility could work at night.
"We're not going to take large outages on either the electrical or the fiber," he said. "So our goal is we're probably going to parallel our existing system. From a customer service standpoint it's not reasonable for us to have long outages."
Webb said without the ditches there would be minimal impact on services.
Concerns about wells
Several residents were concerned about how the ditches would affect their well water. Shannon said the ditches and dry wells are probably going to be close to existing drinking wells.
"You're very close to injecting storm water into existing wells," he said.
Pohle said ditches are the most efficient and effective way of treating storm water before they reach the well, because the water settles across a larger surface. The larger surface allows the water to be treated in the first 6 to 8 inches of soil.
"If you put a dry well in, it's a direct, non-treatment injection into the ground water," he said. "We do not feel like that is the best option."
Solution cost
The majority of the residents in the area were willing to settle with a 28-foot-wide road with curbs and gutters, after people working for the developers said there were engineered plans. Mick Hansen estimated the cost of the change would be about $200,000.
He didn't expect the developer to pay the cost, but did ask whether the county or the PUD could cover the cost.
"I think that's a reasonable expectation," PUD Commissioner Bob Bernd said. "We don't intend to be the deep pocket on this thing, if it can save us some money. It's about making the best business decision."
Bernd and PUD Commissioner Greg Hansen said they would need to consult with the utility's attorney and the other commissioners before they could make any commitment.
Grant County commissioners said they couldn't discuss making a commitment at the meeting. Mick Hansen is scheduled to meet with the county commissioners on Tuesday.