Lombard ponds contribute dirt to Great Western Trail bridges
Construction of three bridges to bring the Great Western Trail in Lombard over St. Charles Road, Grace Street and the Union Pacific Railroad involves all the usual suspects — construction drawings, digging, tractors, concrete — and one unusual component: ponds.
That’s right, ponds. Or more specifically, dirt from two ponds.
Public works Director Carl Goldsmith said 6,200 total cubic yards of dirt has been taken from Finley Road Pond and Morris Pond to be used as filler for the ongoing project to build pedestrian bridges for the trail.
Using local dirt serves two purposes, he said.
First, it decreases the cost of buying and transporting soil for the project. So far, $4.4 million has been awarded for design engineering and construction of the bridges.
Second, removing the dirt from the ponds increases their stormwater capacity, Goldsmith said. Increasing the capacity of the Finley Road and Morris ponds already was on the village’s to-do list, he said, but not until 2014.
The majority of the dirt to be used for the Great Western Trail bridges, roughly 5,000 cubic yards’ worth, was taken from Morris Pond.
“We’ve added significant (water storage) volume to that pond,” Goldsmith said. The pond can hold an extra 200 gallons of water for each cubic yard of dirt removed.
As work on the bridges progresses, the village board Thursday approved a $37,950 increase to the project’s design engineering contract with Bollinger, Lach & Associates of Itasca, bringing the total contract amount to $863,950.
The increase is necessary because a DuPage Water Commission water main was located five feet closer to the proposed bridge structure than was indicated by the commission’s plans. The difference means the bridge’s location must be moved 11 feet and construction drawings must be redone, according to a memo from Village Engineer David Dratnol.
The village will seek reimbursement from the water commission for the additional $37,950 cost because its plans showing where the water main was located “were in error beyond a normal tolerance of utility locations,” Dratnol said in the memo.