If all goes as planned, The Ridge housing addition homeowners will not have as severe of water issues during heavy rain events.
The City has gone out to bid for work on the final phase of the drainage improvements, and the City’s engineering firm, CRC Engineering, held a bid opening and has a recommendation. They’ll be appearing before the City Council at the February 9 regular meeting to do so.
If Council members approve a contractor, the last of the work can get underway for rerouting the drainage areas in The Ridge.
Newcastle City Manager Kevin Self said this work is to change the water flow, so it will lessen the impact on homeowners during heavy rains.
Self said he is glad the City has been able to get this done because some of the homeowners were being negatively impacted during heavy rain.
“Hopefully they won’t have to deal with that anymore,” Self said, “and hopefully it will be done by June 30, so we can close this out and not have to budget it again.”
Self said The Ridge drainage was done in two phases. They separated work so the expenses could be split up in budget years.
“If we had done this in one phase, the City would have had issues paying for it, and other projects would have been put on the back burner,” Self said. “The way we did it, we did the bulk of the work in Phase 1, and then we had engineering done on Phase II.”
The Ridge was not properly built when it was first constructed in Newcastle. This was done before anyone on the Council and City management was in office.
