OCRA grant going toward Cloverdale stormwater needs

Cloverdale Town Hall

CLOVERDALE — With substantial funding from the state secured recently, leaders in Cloverdale are looking forward to addressing extensive stormwater improvements.

With the receipt being an exciting day for Town Manager Jason Hartman, the town was awarded a $600,000 Community Development Block Grant from the Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA) to do so.

The approximately $1 million project will primarily be headed by the town’s stormwater board, which began pursuing the funding and the engineering about a year ago. As such, the board has pledged $400,000 toward the project.

According to the town’s application for the funding, the scope of the project entails improvements in multiple street areas, most notably with Stardust Hills and Doe Creek Drive.

In Stardust Hills, the plan is to install 70 feet of 12-inch piping, 80 feet of 18-inch piping and 70 feet of 24-inch piping, with backfill going on top of them. The roadway would then been rehabbed with riprap added. Additionally, Stardust Way itself is to be resurfaced along with ditch excavation.

With Doe Creek, there is to be 165 feet of 12-inch piping, 325 feet of 15-inch and 465 feet of 18-inch, along with riprap and ditch excavation. This is apart from backfill and road rehabilitation.

Work similar in extent to Stardust Hills is also to be undertaken on Lazy River Road, Market Block and Market, Water and West streets.

Hartman told the board during its regular September meeting that the town was not required to procure an administrator for the grant, but rather could select who it wished.

The council approved an agreement for Mike Kleinpeter, who submited the application, to administer the funding. Meanwhile, HWC Engineering, having done the preliminary engineering, was approved as the project engineer. Their cost was figured into the grant.

Per HWC’s Eric Smith at the meeting, the project is to be bid out by next March, with surveying and design completed between now and then. Construction is expected to begin by spring.