CIAC approves $950,000 capital article for culverts, drainage and emergency road repairs

The Town of Sudbury Capital Improvement Advisory Committee on Monday approved Article 31, a $950,000 capital request to fund culvert, drainage and related road and bridge work, voting 5-0 with two members absent.

The article will pool funds for design, permitting and construction to allow the Department of Public Works to address planned work and emergent culvert failures, DPW head Tina Rivard told the committee. "We do have a lot of dated infrastructure here in town," Rivard said, explaining the request is intended to give the town flexibility to respond to both scheduled projects and unexpected failures.

Rivard cited a recent emergency: "We just had a culvert failure 3 weeks ago, on February 26," at Maynard Farm Road. She also described an earlier swap of projects after a road failure, saying a planned Old Sudbury Road culvert replacement was deferred in favor of an urgent Washington Road culvert replacement when the roadway integrity was compromised. Rivard said the Old Sudbury Road work remains largely in construction phase and that the construction cost on that project is "roughly around 700,000." She told the committee the $950,000 article joins that work with other immediate culvert and drainage needs.

Rivard explained budget assumptions used for the package: a common planning estimate is roughly 10% of total construction cost for design and about 2% for permitting, which helps explain why the lump-sum request appears larger than an individual culvert estimate. She named Concord Road as another near-term need, saying it "needs to go into design" and estimating design and permitting at about $150,000 to $200,000 because the culvert sits about 16 inches below adjacent wetland water levels.

The DPW also reported dam inspection follow-ups. "We did receive a report stating that we need to do some repairs to the Carding Mill Dam. That's anywhere between 87 to a hundred and $59,000. By law, we are going to have to address that within 2 years of the inspection report," Rivard said. She also listed maintenance needs at Stearns Mill Dam and said bridge inspections had identified urgent work at Sherman's Bridge.

On Sherman's Bridge, Rivard said Sudbury is discussing a two-phased partnership with neighboring Wayland. Phase 1 would be immediate, short-term repairs and design work she estimated at about $100,000 total ("50 thousand dollars for from each town"), and she warned larger construction costs could follow: "We will more than likely come back, in fiscal year 27 for, probably about $500,000 just for Sherman's Bridge." She said prior appropriations for the bridge have been used for ongoing inspections and engineering commitments to MassDOT.

Committee members pressed on materials and lifecycle issues. Rivard said culvert materials in town vary: "Some of them are concrete. Most of them are concrete. Some of them are are the the corrugated metal. And then we do have as we're replacing them, we're replacing them with either concrete or, plastic." She described the shorter lifespan of corrugated metal and the use of plastic sleeves and other repairs where feasible, and said some trench-repair technologies used for water or sewer lines (slip-lining) are less common or more expensive for drainage culverts.

Funding sources and schedule: Rivard said Chapter 90 funds (state highway aid) cover milling and paving, and the $950,000 article is intended to address design, permitting and construction for culverts and drainage failures that Chapter 90 would not cover. She said the DPW is coordinating early with utilities—National Grid, Sudbury Water District and Eversource—to avoid trenching after paving and to reduce later rework. Rivard told the committee she would send the members the town's fiscal-year 26 and 27 infrastructure lists used to assemble the article.

The committee voted to recommend Article 31. Roll call recorded votes of yes from Arc, Tom, Susan, Richard and Matt; Pete and Lisa were absent.

Next steps: with CIAC approval, the article moves to the Select Board/Finance Committee process and will appear on the town meeting warrant. DPW staff said they aim to move the highest-priority failures into construction within about a year when funding and scheduling allow.