La Salle sewer cleaning in progress to ward off occasional downtown odor

La Salle Mayor Jeff Grove said the city’s sewer cleaning project has been making progress on eliminating an occasional odor downtown.

The city continued the winter cleaning project, he said during Monday’s City Council meeting.

Bill Garvey, a La Salle resident, asked the council during the public comment section of the meeting if there was a “sewer issue” in the city during December.

“There were two or three days where there was a camera truck at the coroner of Fourth and Joliet, who would then pack up come back on Fourth and Joliet and open the sewer,” he said. “They did that two or three times during the month of December.”

La Salle council will often answer questions posed during the comment section throughout the meeting. Grove answered Garvey immediately, telling him the council approved a contractor to televise all of the city’s sewers, from Fifth Street to Canal — just to clean things out.

“We have a smell downtown once in a while, especially when it’s dry,” he said. “They’ve been making some pretty good progress starting on the east end.”

City Engineer Brian Brown said during the Dec. 23 Finance Committee meeting, SewerTech, LLC, the company hired to complete the cleaning, has been working every day the weather allowed and cleaning “large chunks” — part of the ceiling out of the sewer.

“It’s still stable,” he said during the finance committee meeting. “It’s not that it’s falling apart, but we have a lot of debris which could be backing up the sewage that could be causing some of the smell downtown.”

Brown said the costs would be more elevated than anticipated because of the large debris, but reminded the council that the low bid was around $93,000 and the next was about $162,000.

“I’m not saying we have $70,000 to play with, but it’s going to increase in price just under the contract for what they’ve done because it’s taken a while,” he said. “And then we have three more sections that I’d like to do, which would increase it that much more.”

Brown also said during finance that he was looking into grants and low interest loans with forgiveness and other options the city can utilize to repair the sewer once it’s clean.

During the Dec. 23 meeting the council approved $51,485 to SewerTech for work completed on Fifth Street project and $32,027 to Hoerr Construction for work completed First Street Sewer Cleaning west of Crosat Street.

Grove said the city doesn’t have a completion date as it depends on what the company finds.

“It’s just going to be a work in progress,” he said. “I’m really excited they’re still working even when it’s not too crazy weather during the winter.”