PITTSFIELD, Mass. — One local resident says an obstructed culvert on Dan Casey Drive should be addressed immediately but city officials are focused on executing a complete replacement project for the entire causeway.

 

Water was spilling over the causeway from Onota Lake on Monday and jersey barriers were blocking a section of road where the guardrails have been undermined. Parts of the road were completely under water a couple days ago after the heavy rainfall. 

 

That area is the subject of a million-dollar reconstruction that will go out to bid this year. It includes replacing the causeway's existing culverts with three 5-by-10-foot precast concrete culverts.

 

Daniel Miraglia, a local sportsman who's been involved with lake preservation efforts, insists that an existing culvert is blocked by debris and should be fixed before the construction bidding occurs.

 

"People just don't want to do their jobs," he said, expressing a number of environmental and safety concerns that he said pertain to the situation.

 

Commissioner of Public Utilities Ricardo Morales said last week that because the city is finalizing the documents for construction bidding, the focus is on getting that project done.

 

Construction is expected to run from the summer into the fall.

 

Morales acknowledged that the culvert is not 100 percent functioning but says it is not completely blocked. If there was no water flow through the culvert, there would be different elevations on either side of the road, he said.

 

"Other than the culvert basically not being functional 100 percent, there's really no blockage," Morales said.

 

"It's just the level of the road and the high point of the culvert, so the invert of the culvert, it's just, it's not enough to manage the lake right now."

 

He added that the elevation of the lake is getting higher than the invert of the culvert. This can be seen on the causeway, as flooding around the halfway point often causes Dan Casey Memorial Drive to be closed.

 

The upcoming project also includes two new retaining walls for the causeway, roadway surfaces, and new guard rails.

 

Miraglia believes the city is mismanaging the causeway by not addressing the blockages now. He says the road and embankments are deteriorating and unsafe for the public.

 

"It was one of the greatest natural resources and it still could be if the city of Pittsfield would look at it, as they keep referring to it as the 'jewel of the Berkshires.' I look at it as a potential jewel that's mismanaged and it's mismanaged in a lot of ways but right now, the infrastructure is being mismanaged, which negatively impacts the public resource that belongs to the commonwealth," Miraglia said.

 

"That fishing resource and those banks should be safe at all times for kids and right now, in my professional opinion, both sides of the road are unsafe for the public. That road should be closed, and I hate to say that because I don't want to deprive kids from fishing that spot, but it's dangerous."

 

In January, the Conservation Commission gave the culvert project a stamp of approval after it was continued from the panel's December meeting.

 

Civil engineer Eric Bernardin, vice president of Fuss & O'Neill, which designed the project, explained to the commission in December that an existing 7-foot, corrugated metal culvert was collapsing and had filled with sediment over the years.

 

Two smaller conduits are "in a state of failure" and areas of the retaining walls were not in good shape. 

 

"The proposal is to go ahead and replace those, remove those, and put in three new 5-foot by 10-foot precast concrete culverts," he said. "The footprint of the overall area ... sort of width of the culverts and the location of the retaining walls, are staying in its current position with the exception of the culverts, themselves, are now being moved eastward away from the existing."

 

The new culverts will be located eastward so they don't disturb the old culverts during construction. A second reason was that the state Department of Transportation had asked for piles to be driven down 150 feet to stabilize the culverts because there is about 90 feet of peat under the road. Moving them to where there was 30 feet granular material underneath will still require reinforcement but at a lesser cost, he said. 

 

The existing road is only about a foot or so higher than the pond in some sections and lower than the 100-year floodplain. MassDOT asked that the road be raised above the 100-year floodplain. The two new retaining walls will also sit on the reinforced soil and will be solid, big block, stacking walls. 

 

The city has received $500,000 from the state's Small Bridge grant program to fund the project and the remaining approximately $700,000 will be funded by the city's capital improvement plan for stormwater.