Lakewood Boulevard is a major corridor for Holland residents, with hospitals and clinics, businesses including Boar’s Head, Walmart, and local restaurants, and the main route to the Holland State Park and lakeshore beaches. The existing main under the road was spiral-welded steel transmission main over 50 years old that had several breaks throughout the years. This project was the fourth of six phases that needed to be replaced. The first three phases occurred between 2012–2015 along 136th Avenue, replacing 18,000 feet of 16-inch to 30-inch diameter water main. This fourth phase replaced 7,500 feet of 16-inch diameter water main.
Prein&Newhof was the design engineer for the project and worked with Holland Charter Township to perform construction observation, construction staking, and survey.
This project required coordination with CSX Transportation due to required traffic shifts during construction, and MDOT for work near ramps and under the US–31 overpass. In order to minimize the disruption to traffic, two HDPE directional drills were completed under box culverts within MDOT Right-of-Way and around on/off ramps to US–31. Coordinating with local businesses, transportation departments and residents was particularly unique as Lakewood Boulevard is a major corridor to local businesses and tanks throughout this area. In addition, several fire lines and domestic water services needed to be changed over to the new main while minimizing disruption to those businesses.
Boar’s Head, a local deli, operates 24/7 and will only close temporarily over the weekend (maybe once per month) for cleaning. The water supply layout was set up so that the connection from the old system to the new water main would temporarily shut down Boar’s Head’s water supply, so a line stop ended up being used to prevent this. A line stop is a permanent valve that can be installed within a live water main without shutting it down. Installation went smoothly, and Boar’s Head was able to stay operational while the connection was made.
This project had over 4,000 linear feet of existing water main without valves, making the project particularly difficult to phase and switch a total of 14 distribution connections and 32 water services from the old main to the new main. This meant that almost the entire project limits were under construction and limited to two way traffic (normally five lanes), as restoration was limited until the majority of the water main was completed and fully connected to the old system.
The team had to coordinate night time connections in order to not interfere with daytime schedules and operations of local hospitals and clinics along Lakewood Boulevard. The overall coordination with all local businesses, organizations and residents was positive with limited negative feedback regarding the project.