Missed Opportunities On Western Springs Road Projects

WESTERN SPRINGS, IL – When towns rebuild streets, they usually take the opportunity to replace water and sewer lines.

Doing so at that time saves a lot of money, compared with tearing up streets later.

But Western Springs is not necessarily following this practice. And that may have a big financial impact in the long run, given many of its water and sewer lines are a century old.

Officials acknowledged this problem at Monday's Village Board meeting. It came up during a discussion about a new engineer's map indicating where water and sewer lines most needed replacement, signified by red.

"This may be a silly question, but I see that there are a lot of red dots on Central and Harvey," Trustee Amy Avakian said. "Some of those streets you're working on right now. I assume you're working on the problems while you're there."

Deputy Village Manager Casey Biernacki indicated the assumption was incorrect.

"While we're there, we're taking care of what we can fund right now," he said. "So Central Avenue is a really good example. We're doing sewer work there. We're doing roadway work there. Water main work we're not doing on Central. That's purely because we don't have the funding option to do so."

He continued, "That's been historic for us. There have been roads we've redone that we have not been able to fund the water piece or the sewer piece."

He said one of the big points in the engineer's study is that the village needs to do everything at once.

Village officials also indicated that Western Springs is not replacing utility lines under Wolf Road, which the county is now rebuilding. That, too, is because the village doesn't have the money, they said.

Village Manager Ellen Baer said the village's goal is to better plan such projects to make sure money is available.

"We then would have the funding planned as well, so we don't end up where we have been for the last 100 years, when something breaks and we fix it," she said. "We have to be more proactive. Funding is an integral part of that."