City of Bloomington, Indiana VIDEO UPDATES with Mayor Hamilton, 16 Sep 2022

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From YouTube: HIDDEN RIVER PATHWAY PROJECT

Description

Tune in as Mayor Hamilton and Deputy Mayor Griffin discuss the Hidden River Pathway Project. This project is a two-year downtown stormwater infrastructure reconstruction project to address flooding during rain events. Utilities and its contractor, Milestone Contractors, LLP have been reconstructing 1,829 feet of culverts, along with some sanitary sewers and water mains to support Bloomington’s vibrant downtown. The contractor is currently completing the new culvert under Grant St between Kirkwood and 4th and into the alley south of Grant.

The culverts that currently carry stormwater beneath Bloomington’s downtown are some of the oldest storm sewers in the city; some masonry arches date to 1900. The new culverts will have twice the capacity of those they are replacing and incorporate best practices in the stormwater industry.

This project is on track to be finished by the February 2023 deadline. For more information about the project visit bloomington.in.gov/utilities/hidden-river.

A

Hi, I'm mayor john hamilton and I'm don griffin, the deputy mayor for the city of bloomington, we're sitting here at the hidden river. It's not not quite hidden yet, but it will be right. We're.

B

Really glad to be able to show you this, this is a huge project, that's getting finished up and we wanted to just show before it all gets covered up. We many people don't know, but bloomington downtown has a vast network of storm water systems. This is separate from the sanitary sewers. It's the storm water that takes rainfall and and water, and moves it through our city down back into the stream south, and this is a big project.

B

We call it the hidden river project because it's really a hidden river running right, underneath bloomington we're here between 4th street and kirkwood, and you can see the the deck is getting ready to be put on the last section of a third of a mile of this new expanded culvert, it's gonna be 20 feet wide five feet tall. It's basically doubling the volume of the old culvert and people who've been around a while.

B

Remember, we've been working on this back in the early aughts 2004, there was the big dig up under kirkwood and such and and later then down south. This is the last of the big culvert project that will be completed in a two-year project should be done no later than february next year, but you can see uh it's going to get covered up and it'll help move the storm water through now.

A

There's one more project: they have to do a little further up north northeast here. The inlet.

B

The inlet that's right, because um we still need to expand the size of the inlet to match the full size of this system to help get the storm water through and that's right at sixth, in indiana, right by dunn, meadow and that project is under design and plan and it'll be done in the next year or two.

B

Now. All of this is trying to help manage frankly, greater storms that we're seeing with climate change. This is really part of climate adaptation trying to deal with that. It's a 13 million dollar project that the utility pays out of ratepayer pays and it's really going to help our downtown.

B

So it is a hidden river and we want you to see it before it gets closed up and to know how important it is for bloomington's future, and I want to thank the city of bloomington utilities, which has done a great job with their contractors too, with a safe and excellent construction project.