AUBURN – City crews will begin tearing into Spring Street Monday as part of the city’s storm-water separation project.

The work should wrap up in about three weeks. Crews then will move the project to Granite Street and to Court Street between Granite and Park streets later this spring. City Engineer Steve Ranney said crews should wrap up this phase of the sewer project by July 25.

“The object is to really start working on Court Street after school lets out for the summer,” Ranney said. “The state is scheduled to do some preservation work there, and we need to be done before they get started.”

The work is part of a federally required project to create a separate sewer system for storm water in the city. That’s designed to keep sudden rainstorms and downpours from overloading the city’s sanitary sewer treatment system.

The work on Spring Street is pretty straightforward, Ranney said. Crews won’t have to close the street to traffic. Granite and Court streets will be much more involved. Both will involve blasting.

“We need to get in and get the pipe deep enough,” he said. “The only way to do that is to blast.”

Granite Street will be closed between Fern and Court streets for about three weeks beginning in May. Crews should move to Court Street in June, closing parts of the road between Granite and Park for the next five weeks.

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