The in basket: I had some time to kill in Belfair a week or so ago, so I walked around looking at the widening project under way through town.
I walked a bit off the roadway near Romance Hill Road and saw about 200 lengths of pipe stacked three- and four-deep next to what appeared to be a completed storm water detention pond. I estimated each pipe to be 20 feet long and about two feet in diameter. It seemed like an awful lot of pipe yet to go in the ground on a project with curbs already poured. I asked if it was all for the Belfair project and what the likely impacts would be on traffic when it’s installed, if so.
The out basket: Yes, says Claudia Bingham-Baker, spokeswoman for the Olympic Region of state highways.
“The pipe you saw is corrugated plastic pipe that will be installed as part of the drainage system in the Belfair project. It ranges in diameter between 24″ and 18″, and is being installed during night hours during normal single-lane closures so we can reduce impacts to traffic.
“Much of this pipe has been installed on the job already – it’s noticeable now because the contractor moved it to a new location,” she said.
