Last week, my musing was dedicated to some of the major initiatives that I feel we need to get kickstarted throughout the coming year. Those were new processes and projects that have not taken their first steps yet. No matter what happens with those projects, it is undeniable that we must continue to dedicate appropriate resources to build and re-build our aging roads and sewer infrastructure.
Over the last several years, the borough has paved and rehabilitated hundreds of miles of roads across the borough. Obviously, there remains hundreds of more roads to complete and, like previous years, we will make every effort to repair, micro surface, and repave as many of them as possible. In 2023, there are 141 road segments — intersection to intersection — scheduled for maintenance totaling nearly 10.5 miles of roadway in the borough. Later this year, a full schedule of work will be released by the public works department to organize and plan each project.
Going beyond our roadways, we must prioritize the repair and redevelopment of our sewer system. As has been discussed by the council and me over the last few weeks, our sewer system — and all those around us — is over 100 years old and some of the older sections of the sewer lines are in desperate need of repair or outright replacement.
The repair of a sewer system is one of the hardest of any infrastructure project. It is both time-consuming and costly. It requires the removal of pavement and/or sidewalks to reach the pipes, and then we must shut down the system to remove those lines and replace them with new sewer systems that meet higher standards than their existing 100-year-old predecessors. Everything about sewer replacement is a challenge — especially when you do not want to rip up a roadway that was recently repaved or repaired.
To properly approach this infrastructure challenge will require substantial grant funding over multiple years. We cannot realistically pull up all of our sewer infrastructure in a single year, or even two years. We will need to spend the better part of a decade removing and replacing sections of the sewer as we repair the roadways and as issues arise. Public Works is actively working on a way to fund and plan this major redevelopment of our sewer system and I am hoping in the coming months we will have a finalized approach to ensure our sewer infrastructure is up to date and operating efficiently.
Finally, and this is an important note, to do more road repairs and sewer repair, we will need to think of news ways to fund these projects. The sewer alone is tens of millions of dollars to fully repair. Taking a loan out is a band-aid solution that will only result in another loan being necessary some time down the line when other infrastructure begins to fail. That is why exploring new ideas around 5G as a service and building solar to offset our purchase power agreement are so important. They create new funding opportunities for us to tap into while still building and repairing the borough rather than that money going to massive non-local corporations.
To fully approach our infrastructure challenges, we must continue to do the work we can now while also building the services that will help fund these large rehabilitations into the future. We must build a community that is sustainable and flexible going forward without losing sight of the necessary work that must be completed today. Each year we will chip away rebuilding our aging roads and sewer infrastructure while also standing up new services that will allow us to expedite those projects in time.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert. The views expressed are his own.)
See also:
Mayoral Musings: Goals and Objectives for 2023
Mayoral Musings: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Mayoral Musings: Attacks on Local Drag Queen’s Employment Another Example of ‘Otherism’
Mayoral Musings: Municipal 5G – Answering Reader Questions
Mayoral Musings: Municipal 5G is Lansdale’s Way Forward
