ST. MARY PARISH — It has been a little over three months since Morgan City’s sewer infrastructure project began,aimed at updating the city’s aging pipes. According to Kawika Kai, the Water, Wastewater, and Gas Supervisor for Morgan City, phase two of the project is nearly complete.
“Currently, we’re about 30 percent done with that phase two project. They’re going to camera it and place GIS markers at surface laterals, which will help us create an updated map of the section we’re working on” Kai says.
This project is crucial for identifying issues within the city’s pipes Kai explains, as many of them are nearly 50 years old. Additionally, it aims to improve understanding of the locations of existing telecommunication lines.
“What’s happening is a lot of these cables are going through existing surface hangouts, and the city doesn’t have any maps on that, so we can’t tell you where the lines are located,” Kai stated.
The project is also expected to assist contractors in the directional boring process, which involves the installation of underground utilities. “This will hopefully kill two birds with one stone,” Kai noted. “We’ll have a mapping system and will be able to inform contractors about areas suitable for directional boring.”
David Risk, a Morgan City resident, expressed skepticism, describing the initiative as “too little, too late.” He remarked, “Sometimes it’s too late to fix things. You should have done it when you first started seeing cracks or leaks. When you wait years, you end up replacing everything instead of just the parts that were damaged.”
Looking ahead, Kai indicated that addressing the issues within the water system will be the focus of phase three of the project.
“We’ll need to examine all the issues that were identified and possibly contract repairs for those areas. Then we’ll have a more reliable system in that area and move on from there” Kai says.
Phase two of the project is expected to be completed by mid-November.
