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Hudson's Main Rd. a bit of a minefield
Town gets new sewer system
Alycia Ambroziak
The Gazette
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Making your way down Main Rd. these days is anything but easy. (DAVE SIDAWAY/The Gazette)
Hudson residents and business owners who’ve spent the last couple of weeks detouring through the downtown section along Main Rd. that has been dug up due to work on the town’s new sewage system will have to wait a couple of weeks more to get their road back.
Town Engineer Trail Grubert said a portion of Main Rd. has been dug up to install the necessary pipes for the town’s first sewage system.
“The contract specified that no work will be allowed on Main Rd. in June, July and August,” Grubert said. “That means the downtown section of road now dug up will be repaved by June 1.”
That’s good news for many local merchants.
“About 10 per cent of our business has dropped off since work began a couple of weeks ago,” said Linda May of May’s Studio.
“I’m happy our section will be done soon,” she said.
“And I, along with all the other Hudson merchants, want to thank everyone for their patience.”
Mike Poirier, owner of the IGA in Hudson, jokingly refers to the section of Main Rd. in front of his store as the Iraq of Quebec.
“It’s a mess out there. But by June 1, it will be back to normal,” he said.
“Meanwhile, I hired a parking attendant to help direct traffic in the parking lot.
“And if things weren’t bad enough,” he said, “we had a boil-water advisory last week.”
The advisory was lifted yesterday.
Poirier, who lowered the cost of bottled water in his store during the boil-water advisory, said his business has dropped by 10 per cent since the digging began.
“That means 90 per cent of our customers kept coming to our store, despite the difficulty. We’ll be putting in extra promotions as of June 1 to thank them for their loyalty.”
Grubert said installation of the sewage pipes, a $6.2-million job, will continue along some side streets after June 1. Other work along Main Rd. will resume in September.
The new sewer system will serve the downtown core as well as 800 of the town’s 2,200 residences, Grubert said.
“The others will remain on a septic system,” he said, adding that residents in the central area of town have smaller lots and septic systems take up a lot of room.
“Those residents can’t expand their homes or put in a pool, for example; there is no room in their yards because the septic tanks take up a lot of space. But once you go beyond the central core of town, the lots are at least 30,000 square feet and that allows for a lot of room for a septic system.”
Grubert said construction has also begun on a new $5.4-million sewage treatment plant, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year and in operation by next spring.