Crews arrive to complete prep work for repainting

FRANKLIN

Since February 2018, the Hunterdale water tower has been scheduled for repainting and maintenance. Now, that work is about to begin.

According to Steve Watson, utilities superintendent for the city’s Public Works department, crews with the company that the city has contracted to perform the repainting and maintenance arrived today, Oct. 7, for the purpose of completing prep work, which must be done before the tank can be drained and taken out of service. This work includes welding supports and the building of a containment system around the tank.

During the course of the project, which is expected to take from four to six months, residents can expect to see a large curtain around the tank during sandblasting, and pressure relief valves on seven fire hydrants in the northern part of the city. Residents can also anticipate lower-than-normal water pressure and lack of free-flow capacity in the northern part of the city during this time, Watson said.

He added that the city will need to use its emergency generator on College Drive at the booster pump.

“We will have to use the booster pump on College Drive to pump water to the northern part of the city to maintain water system pressures to our customers,” Watson said.

City Manager Amanda Jarratt confirmed that the city’s public safety telecommunications equipment that had been installed on top of the water tower has been moved to a temporary, portable tower, which Franklin’s City Council had voted to purchase in February. At that time, work on the Hunterdale water tower had been expected to begin sometime before June 30, which was the end of the city’s 2018-2019 fiscal year.

Jarratt had informed the Council in February that if work did not begin prior to June 30, the city would have been out several hundred thousand dollars it had already paid when it entered into the maintenance contract. Despite the project’s delay until October, this didn’t happen, Jarratt confirmed.

“The contractor worked with our schedule,” she said.