Mother Nature slows Heber pipe replacement work

Last year, Heber City began a water and sewer line replacement project and planned to work through the winter, but frequent snowstorms have brought challenges.

A map on the city website shows most of the replacements happening east of Main Street between 500 North and 600 South, along with a stretch of 300 West from 400 North to Center Street.

On Tuesday, Heber City staff engineer Kyle Turnbow told city council crews have taken advantage of dry spells to make progress street by street.

“We are still slowly but surely working along out there,” he said. “They're continuing up 200 South right now, working into the tie-ins and the cross-streets down to 300 South.”

The work involves digging into streets and replacing pipes that are up to 72 years old. Heber City Manager Matt Brower said residents can expect warnings in the form of flyers before crews come to their streets.

The city’s original goal was to wrap up the pipe replacements by the end of 2024, but Brower said it could take another year.

Turnbow said once the weather warms up, the city will deploy up to 14 crews on multiple construction sites at a time. That’s about double the number of workers at a given time last year.

“They're really anticipating to ramp up and be doing multiple streets at a time in different phases,” Turnbow said. “Hopefully this summer, they’re anticipating to be able to finish up three, four streets with water, sewer, [pressurized irrigation], and then start paving those streets as well so that it's not left until the very end of October to get the paving done.”

The total estimated price tag is around $80 million, making it one of the most expensive projects the city has ever undertaken.

More information about the water and sewer lines project is available at hebercityut.gov.

Heber City