Council approves insertive valve for Tenth Street water tie‑in to limit outages

Powell City Council voted to approve a change order to install an insertive valve on a decades‑old water main on Tenth Street so the city can tie a relocated water line into storm-drain improvements without a widespread outage.

Staff and Engineering Associates described three options: do nothing and accept a full outage during the tie-in; install an insertive valve (staff’s recommendation), or install a new, traditional gate valve. Engineering Associates’ Eric Walker said the insertive valve would limit outages to the smallest number of customers during construction and could be installed on the project timeline. He warned that insertive valves are less durable than a newly constructed gate valve and may allow a small amount of water through the seat because of pipe interior condition; they are nevertheless commonly used in municipalities.

Transcript figures: staff said the insertive valve quote was roughly $21,000 while the new gate-valve change order was about $28,000. The project is part of an ARPA-funded storm drain project (staff cited roughly $950,000 in ARPA funds for the broader storm project) and the city’s contractor for the storm-drain work is Earth Movers Excavation. Engineering staff said the work will require an outage that could last around eight hours for the set of customers between Seventh and Tenth streets; depending on the option selected there may be a required second, shorter outage affecting a smaller group of customers.

Council voted to approve the insertive valve change order with a contingency that, if the supplier cannot meet the schedule, the council authorizes proceeding with the conventional valve change order; the motion carried.

Engineering staff said the installed valve will be normally open and will allow future isolation for repairs and future connections as the north Crawford subdivision grows.