Extension to work on Vale Road sewer improvements

Regrettably the drainage improvement work in Vale Road will need to be extended until the end of February (an extension of approximately four weeks).

The work to upsize 235 metres of the existing sewer has been partly hindered by difficult ground conditions but the main delay has been due to the location of the many existing utilities beneath the road, which were not where they were expected to be.  Major changes to the original location of the new sewer have had to be made as a result.

The road closure will now be extended to the end of February 2018.

"The extension to this road closure is extremely regrettable and we apologise to both residents and businesses in the area as well as other road users," said Mark Walker, capital delivery manager for Guernsey Water.

"Our initial investigations involved substantial desk top studies of existing utility records and also excavations on site to locate these services. However, when we opened up our trench we found that the services deviated from what was expected, so we need to relocate our sewer.

"This requires substantial additional engineering work in order to maintain existing sewer flows without excessively disrupting residents' wastewater services.

"We are sorry that this is going to cause further inconvenience to residents and commuters that normally use Vale Road.

"We are doing everything we can to reduce the time of the extension.  This includes not reopening Vale Road temporarily during the Christmas break as we originally proposed. Opening Vale Road over Christmas and the New Year would have required seven to 10 days of non-productive work backfilling, resurfacing, re-establishing the site working area and then re-excavating the trench.

"In order to get the work done as quickly as possible we will keep the site open and continue working whenever we can during the Christmas and New Year period, we will also be working longer hours on Saturdays (between 8am-4pm)."

Traffic is unable to access the Vale Road in either direction between the Halfway and the traffic lights at the St Clair Hill/Le Murier junction - with the exception of local residents and businesses.

Guernsey Water will make every effort to keep disruption to an absolute minimum with work beginning at 8am until 6pm on Mondays to Fridays and on Saturdays between 8 am and 4pm.

For more background details on HSS project see: http://www.water.gg/St-sampson-wastewater-catchment-improvements

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