Ongoing sewer projects continue to press patience of Concord drivers
CONCORD – The 2024 sewer upgrade projects that tore up streets across town and frustrated motorists will continue to be center stage in 2025 and beyond.
Expect orange cones, street closures and detour signage as the city completes deferred work and commences still more road construction activity.
Among the big ongoing projects is the $13 million Willow Pass/Landana piece that involves replacing approximately 2.5 miles of sewer main running through downtown Concord. It’s slated to be finished in May 2025.
Then there are smaller, though no less significant, items like the Downtown Sanitary Sewer Upgrade that will complete the remainder of the sewer main and lateral repairs needed as identified in the Concord Downtown Area Sewer Evaluation Report. It will also include dig-outs, pavement overlay and restriping. Weather permitting, city engineer Carlton Thompson anticipates completion by this March.
“We don’t want them digging holes when it is raining,” said Thompson, citing adjusted schedules and time lost waiting for the ground to dry out.
“You have to work around the weather and stay safe doing it,” he continued. “If it takes a couple of months extra, so be it. That’s life in California.”
Among the funding sources is Measure V, a voter-approved one-cent transaction and use tax intended to preserve city services, address infrastructure backlogs, and support community priorities – big and small – that have and will continue to challenge the patience of motorists.
Sewer Enterprise is another funding source for the ongoing work that will be a way of life in the city for the next few years as the deferred projects get completed.
Prior allocations for sewer infrastructure total $22.76 million. The Fiscal Year 2025 funding request for sewer infrastructure projects is $8.96 million. Fiscal Year 2026 brings another $11 million in funding requests.
Looking ahead to Fiscal Year 2027, ’28 and ’29, funding requests total $400,000 for citywide Sewer Lateral Replacement Study and Program costs.
Plans for 2025 and 2026 include six sewer improvement projects that will assess and repair selective pipe segments within designated neighborhoods. That includes the Concord BART Area Sewer and Street Improvements, Clayton Valley Highlands Sanitary Sewer Repairs, David Avenue Area Sanitary Sewer Repairs and Marsh Creek Sewer Capacity Improvements.
It’s all about trying to catch up on deferred work, and Thompson lauded the public’s patience with inconveniences caused by the road construction.
“It can get frustrating,” he said, noting that the result will be improvements that allow the public to go about their daily lives.
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David Scholz
David Scholz is back in journalism as a freelance writer and photographer after nearly two decades in education. Prior to moving into teaching in 2000, he worked as a full-time journalist since 1988 for rural community and small daily newspapers in Central Ohio and Northern Nevada, and later in California with The Business Journal in Fresno and dailies in the Bay Area, including The Oakland Tribune and The San Francisco Chronicle. More recently Scholz also worked in an editing, writing, and page layout role with the Rossmoor News.