With summer coming to an end and fall coming up very close on the horizon, the Crookston Public Works Department and all of its divisions are making preparations and look to begin finishing some of its summer projects in time for the new season and even for winter.
The Public Works Street Department is currently working to complete sidewalk replacements in different areas in downtown Crookston, with them recently completing patchwork on South Main Street by Schultz Carpeting and preparing to pour and replace new sidewalk panels on North Main Street by Taco Johns. Other improvements were across from Holiday Gas Station, where some trees had pushed up the sidewalk, so the department removed the sidewalk and the trees that caused the rifts and is preparing the sod and grass stages on First and Second Avenue N. this week. A few other sidewalk panels also need to be replaced due to them receiving some damage from holding the replacement vehicles and equipment.
Public Works Director Brandon Carlson said that once those Street Improvement projects are completed, the Public Works crews and the department will shift their attention to maintaining the trees around the neighborhood. “The Public Works crews are going to shift their attentions soon from pavement and sidewalk repairs to hit some diseased trees here around town,” Director Brandon Carlson explained. “We’re going to start in the Samson’s addition and get all of the boulevard trees that are either dead or diseased taken care of down there, and we’ll spider-web out from there. The Samson’s addition, in my opinion, has the most dead trees right now, so we’ll start there and work out from there.” While the department has completed many road and sidewalk projects over the summer, they haven’t fully caught up with the road repair they had planned due to the flooding in the spring. Carlson reported that the department would make a few more rounds around the city to fill any potholes or water valves to prevent the snowplows from damaging them. Carlson said the department’s current goal is to complete as much sidewalk work as they can this summer to allow them to focus their resources on a different area next year.
Public Works’ other departments are also preparing for the changing season, such as the Wastewater Department making upgrades to the Lift Stations and preparing for winter storage. “The Wastewater Department has completed the control panel upgrades, and new pumps are going into Lift Stations one and two,” Carlson explained. “They are also trying to get their water sent down to the secondaries and get ready for winter storage out at the ponds.” The department will also begin jetting the Water Mains for a quarter of the town to clean out any blockage or sewage once they finish assisting the Sanitation Department in replacing the pumps around the city. Carlson states that this will not cause anyone to lose the use of their water, but people will see the truck parked for long periods of time in the middle of some roads.
The Sanitation Department and garbage crews are also preparing for the next season, mainly for Fall Clean-Up week at the end of October. While there is still time for them to plan, Director Carlson is planning to do it differently this year due to one of the department’s garbage trucks currently being unusable. “We used to have two garbage trucks, and one of them is down, so until we get our other one, we can’t operate like we used to. My initial game plan right now is from 24 thru the 29. We’ll do demolition and bagged household garbage, then a week or two later, we’ll most likely do brush and leaf pickup,” Carlson explained. “It’s going to be a split approach this year, and it might work better as we’ll be able to designate more crews to demo and garbage, and we can get it picked up a bit quicker. It might become the new normal, to be honest, but we’ll see how it works this year and go from there.”
We will have more information about Fall Clean-Up week as we get closer to the date, and more information about how it will be done is revealed.
