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The Windsor Town Council recently authorized survey work to be done to assess a potential drainage solution for the Bank Street-to-U.S. Route 258 drainage.

At the council’s Feb. 13 meeting, Windsor Town Manager William Saunders said, “Following the Bowman Engineering drainage study, two primary drainage areas were identified as priorities: one, the drainage from Virginia Avenue to (U.S.) Route 460, and the other, the drainage from Bank Street to (U.S.) Route 258 on the north side of the railroad.”

Saunders then noted that a further preliminary engineering report was created by ATCS, a professional engineering consulting firm, and it was funded by Isle of Wight County, focusing on these two drainages. 

“A potential alternate drainage solution for the Bank Street-to-Route 258 drainage is being explored,” he said. “To assess this potential drainage solution, survey work must be conducted. ATCS has provided a proposal for that surveying work, which is broken into two phases. The second phase will only be conducted if the first phase shows promise.”

He indicated that this work was being proposed as a stormwater project in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) plan. 

“I recommend the Town Council authorize the survey work, as outlined in the attached proposal, with the second phase contingent upon a positive result from the first,” he said.

Then he turned council members’ attention directly to the proposal from ATCS — titled “Redd’s Storage Site Survey Proposal” — found in their meeting packets and also online at www.windsor-va.gov/page/2024-town-council-agendas-and-minutes/ under the link “Drainage Survey Proposal” that is part of the Feb. 13 meeting listing.

“Basically, multiple businesses’ drainage goes to the rear of the Redd’s Storage property, and as we discussed before, the pipe in the railroad right of way that dumps behind Dairy Queen has got issues,” Saunders said. “So this is an exploration to see if some of that water can be routed a different way to ultimately get it into the same branch that it’s going to on the other side of the Dairy Queen. And what’s proposed here is potentially rerouting that back to the street right of way in front of Dollar General and Burger King.

“But to know if there’s enough fall there, we need survey work done on the inverts of the culverts of the entrances to the Dollar General and the Burger King and the drain at the intersection of Route 258 and 460,” he continued.

The proposal opens by stating the following: “ATCS is to provide professional land surveying services as requested by the town of Windsor to address drainage issues associated with the Redd’s Storage site located at 45 West Windsor Boulevard. These services will be provided so that the town can assess potential drainage solutions for this site. The services are broken down into two separate tasks…”

Saunders summarized these tasks.

“So the first task in this scope of service is just the surveying work to determine the inverts of that path to see if there’s enough fall to explore this further,” he said, with “fall” being a reference to a sloping, falling surface.

“The second task is a topographical survey of that route that you can see hatched in red in your exhibit,” he said, referring to the proposal documentation’s exhibit that accompanies this story, “and basically, that would be, call Miss Utility, getting everybody to mark all the utilities there. They would survey that, show the elevations, contours and underground utilities that may be a conflict in that second, and then that would position us for designing a repair job if one is viable.”

Saunders reiterated, “I would recommend, in the interest of time, approving this in total, but I would not move forward with the second task unless the first task showed that there was enough fall to move forward.”

He added that the drainage committee met Feb. 12 and reviewed the ATCS proposal. The committee gave its recommendation to the council to approve the proposal.

The proposal documentation stated that the lump sum fee for the first task would be $1,980, and the lump sum fee for the second task would be $3,300.

Windsor Vice Mayor J. Randy Carr confirmed with Saunders that if the council accepted the proposal, the money to pay for this survey work would be ARPA funds.

Councilman Walter Bernacki said, “I’ll make a motion we approve both survey tasks, Task 2 obviously being contingent on a positive outcome of Task 1.”

The motion was seconded and passed by a unanimous 6-0 vote.