All the work is part of the City of Columbia’s Annual Maintenance and Rehabilitation.

The work is being done in the street or in the City’s utility right-of-way. The right-of-way generally extends from the street to the water meter.

There are three types of work being done.

The first is clearing the sewer pipes from homes by vacuuming and inspecting. In some cases, a cleanout in the City’s right-of-way will have to be installed.

The contractor should be advising homeowners via doorhangers 2-3 days before the work is scheduled to be done.

The second and third methods should not involve homeowners’ property and does not require trenching of the entire stretch of pipe, but only excavations at the beginning and end of a run of pipe. So you see the seemingly random patches of new asphalt!

CIPP (cured-in-place pipe) is a method of basically installing a liner into an existing sewer pipe to seal leaks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cured-in-place_pipe

Pipe bursting involves pulling a new pipe into an existing pipe which effectively breaks the old pipe as the new pipe is being inserted. This method has thus far not been used in our neighborhood, but the new pipe is being staged on Wilmot next to Kilbourne Hill. When the installation begins, this staged pipe is dragged to the location. That’s why the pipe appears and disappears from Wilmot periodically!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_bursting

If you have any questions about the general projects, please contact Philip Wall (Brown & Caldwell) at 803-673-3202. For issues with your property, contact Jonathan Vang (IPR) at 832-610-6254.

As a point of interest, when you see flags or markings on the roadway in general these are blue for water, green for sewer, yellow for gas, orange for telecom, and red for electrical.