Summer has just started, but city construction crews have already been busy making road and curb repairs, as well as coming up with creative solutions for improving Holbrook’s water system.

City Manager Ray Alley explained that three new water lines were recently run underneath Navajo Blvd., all without disrupting the flow of traffic.

“The water line by Dairy Queen has had a problem with low pressure, in fact it was so low that Dairy Queen had to close sometimes because they didn’t have water,” Alley said.

The city had few options to solve the problem, since a connection to a new line was necessary to restore regular pressure. It appeared that the only way to do that was to bore through a hill or dig up the main street to make the connection, until staff members found a company capable of boring under the street without tearing it up or disrupting traffic.

Alley explained that in one day, the company bored a hole under the street and ran three separate lines from a main near the cemetery across to the Dairy Queen area. He noted that one line will serve the restaurant, another will serve the neighboring Fuel Express and the third will be available for development of the empty lot between the freeway and Dairy Queen.

“It cost $5,000 to run three lines,” he said, explaining that while the cost is high the alternative may have been more expensive.

He also noted that the method may be useful in other similar situations now that city officials know that it worked well.

In addition to the new water lines, city crews are working on replacing cement curbing along the edge of the Safeway parking lot as well as a forced main near Park Elementary School. Alley explained that the work on the main was planned so that it could occur while school was out to minimize the disruption to traffic.

Alley also reported that he has been working on a solution to a number of citations issued to the city by the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH). During the inspection the city had a number of minor violations, totaling $4,750 in fines. According to Alley, the violations were corrected within two weeks of receipt, with the exception of one.

“We are only lacking getting load testing on the decks where we store our parts,” he said.

He noted that since the city made the corrections quickly, the department agreed to reduce the fines by 50 percent, but he contacted the department and was able to get the total reduced further to $1,750.

“Some of it is our fault, like a guard that was off of a table saw,” he said. “We should have caught that.”