Boil order in effect in Highland as city works on 6th Street project

Dozens of Highland homes are under a boil order this week as the 6th Street project moves forward.

6th Street is being completely replaced this summer as part of the city’s street renovation projects. City Manager Chris Conrad said whenever they do street work, they’re trying to relocate older water mains from the middle of the street to the right of way.

“There’s nothing more frustrating than when you just finished (a street project) and a main goes out, and you have to cut into a brand new street,” Conrad said.

Initially, city leaders hoped they could tear out the old street and replace the main simultaneously. “But the old main was pretty brittle,” Conrad said, and kept breaking under the strain. So they stopped the street project to install and switch over to the new water main, in the right-of-way along the street.

The boil orders this week are for the houses along those mains as they switch each house to the new main. The first boil order, issued Monday, listed 24 homes on Zschokke Street and three more on 7th Street. On Tuesday morning, the city added dozens more on Cypress, 6th, 7th and Zschokke streets. The specific addresses are listed on the Highland city website.

The order will be lifted once samples taken to a lab are cleared, which usually takes about 48 hours, the announcement read.

Conrad said the project was originally slated to be done in mid-August, but with the need to stop road construction until the mains were switched, it has been pushed back to an early-September end date. “Once this gets done and everything is switched over, the rest should go pretty quickly,” Conrad said.

The total project cost for 6th Street is $1.5 million, of which the city is funding $650,000.

The contractor on the project is RCS Construction Inc. Anyone with questions should go to highlandil.gov or call 618-654-6823

This story was originally published July 30, 2024 at 11:40 AM.