Potholes, crumbling sidewalks and poor drainage in Orangeburg’s Pine Top subdivision are all going to be fixed, city officials promised residents during a public meeting on the matter.
“It has been a long time coming,” Orangeburg Assistant City Administrator John Singh told residents last week.
“The more important thing is we are moving forward and we are getting the problems fixed. We are committed to that,” he said.
The problems with the Pine Top subdivision’s roads are not new, with poor drainage leading to road damage, officials say. City officials claim the drainage was not properly installed.
Unlike most of the roads in the city, which are owned by the state, the city took over the roads in the subdivision shortly after it was developed in the 1990s. The only exception is the road over the dam, which is the responsibility of the subdivision’s homeowners association.
The subdivision is located off Livingston Terrace and includes the streets Chelsea Close, Livingston Terrace NW, Way Drive, Allington Close, Avian Court and Teaticket Court.
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About $600,000 was set aside for improvements in the 2016 capital project sales tax referendum approved by voters. About $14,000 of the money has been spent for an initial engineering study.
“Your penny money set-aside kind of sat,” Singh said.
Singh expects the entire project will cost a lot more, estimating it to be in the $2 million to $2.5 million range.
While the city has attempted to fix the road, the issue at the heart is poor drainage, Singh said.
“We have put asphalt six inches deep,” Singh said, noting the problem is an infrastructure issue that will wear away the asphalt in a period of time.
“That is the dilemma,” he said.
There are areas in the subdivision where the asphalt is in decent condition, but the subdivision has yet to be built out to its full capacity. There will be more homes and cars that could put more stress on the infrastructure, he said.
The city plans to conduct some repairs to help fix the potholes in the bad areas in the short-term, but “we are talking about a project that could be a year and a half longer,” Singh said.
The short-term fix is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $80,000.
Singh said the next step will be to seek proposals for the evaluation of the problem with the drainage system.
“What has caused your problems is, number one, Pine Top starts at the top and basically the water comes down and goes through the subdivision,” Singh said.
“Sometimes the dam overflows. There is a lot of water. That water gets under, it sits there a little bit, it erodes the base and in some places it washes the base out,” he said.
Singh said it seems that there are issues with pipe joints and undersized pipes.
“You don’t have the right-sized pipe and you have water coming in. It is just a recipe for disaster,” he said.
Singh said the plan is to get the entire project done at one time rather than having to do the project piecemeal and at different times.
Residents will be kept abreast of the project’s status through various channels of communication, he said.
Herb Gilliam of the engineering firm Johnson, Laschober and Associates said some of the problems have to do with the topography of the subdivision.
Gilliam said a consultant has examined the asphalt subbase in the area and found in some cases it was nonexistent and others where it did not meet the bare minimum standard of road subbase. Gilliam compared the subbase to the foundation of a house.
“The infrastructure of the subdivision basically failed,” Singh said. “It is not just one failure but multiple failures: the sidewalks, curbing, asphalt. Those all have to be addressed.”
“This going to be a process,” Singh said. “It will not be an overnight thing.”
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