Galesville prepares for infrastructure project on city’s west side

All the way back in the City of Galesville’s 2009 comprehensive plan, there is a note about rehabilitating or replacing old sewer lines and undersized lines. Now over a decade and a half later, the city will soon begin a sizable infrastructure project on the west side of Galesville to address those issues.

The planned project will include the installation of new sewer and water lines along with any necessary street construction. Sidewalks, curb and gutter will also be replaced where necessary as well within the project area near Cance Park and Galesville Elementary School. As of early this week, the starting date for the project had not been finalized. 

According to Mayor Tom Thatcher, the project “will replace the undersized water mains serving some parts of Galesville and will replace some failing sewer lines.”

Thatcher said that there had been plans to undergo this project twice before, but it failed to materialize.

“We have undersized water mains, so every year the DNR calls us and says, ‘Have you replaced the water mains yet?’ And we say no. So that’s one of the main reasons is just to get us up to the DNR standards for providing water to the houses,” Thatcher said. “And then if those roads ever got bad and needed to be replaced or anything like that, we could not do that without replacing the water mains. We could pave the roads, we could do that type of stuff. But if we were ever going to replace them, we would be forced to replace the water and failing sewer lines as well.”

Thatcher said the city decided it was the right time to undertake this project after consulting with their financial advisor due in large part to the closing of a tax incremental district (TID) that will provide the city with some extra money and expand the tax base.

“We get some extra money from our tax base and from the TID money. And we have money in the water account, sewer account to help pay for part of the cost,” Thatcher said. “Part of it’s going to be paid from water, part of it’s going to be paid from sewer and part of it’s going to be paid from like the general fund. We’ll have to borrow some money, but that’s to be determined.”

Thatcher said that the project is estimated to have a price tag in the neighborhood of $3.3 million. The exact funding breakdown for the project will materialize further after another meeting with the city’s financial advisor, Ehlers, followed by approval from the city council, and a firmer timeline of the project’s work will be known after an upcoming pre-construction meeting.

Once all that’s settled, the long-awaited work can finally begin with an end result for residents that Thatcher says should yield “better water service” along with “nice brand new roads and brand new curbs and sidewalks where they’re replaced.”