Sewer job knots traffic on Bell Blvd.

A continuation of the replacement of the sewer pipe underneath Bell Boulevard at 41st Avenue in Bayside has snarled traffic again as it did last winter.
Last September, KJ Delaney Construction, in tandem with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), started work on the collapsed sewer, near the always-packed intersection across from the Bayside Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)stop on the Port Washington line.
They finished the initial replacement job, a 58-foot patch of pipe, but stopped work last November because of the city’s Holiday Embargo, which halts work on all critical projects during the winter holiday season.
Because the first job was a separate contract from the current one, the DEP said, work on the sewer replacement project did not begin until March 22nd.
Community residents are upset that the project took so long to start up again; they were told the workers would return shortly after Christmas.
Furthermore, others say they have been forced to either walk or drive around the intersection on Bell Boulevard and 41st Avenue because of heavy congestion due to narrowed driving lanes (forced by construction) and the LIRR travelers.
“An old street with old infrastructure and a lot of heavy traffic that goes on,” Community Board 11 Chair Jerry Iannece said, “it’s to be assumed that you’re going to get this type of thing.”
This part of the sewer replacement job entails just 47 feet of new piping. The reason for the lengthy process, the DEP says, is the depth of the sewer, which goes 30-feet deep. “It was something that couldn’t be done from the surface,” DEP spokesman Ian Michaels said. “It had to be dug up and given how busy the street is and how deep the sewer is, it was necessary to get a contractor and dig a full trench.”
Michaels said the job should be finished within the next month.