Duracap starts repaving East Norris, Dogwood under $177K city contract
Duracap Paving moves heavy equipment onto East Norris Road in Norris on Monday morning in preparation for paving a section of the road beginning this week. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
The contract with Duracap Asphalt Paving Contractors of Knoxville includes $119,000 to grind off part of the current surface and add a new 1.5-inch asphalt overlay to East Norris Road.
It also includes repaving a section of Dogwood Road from Norris Square to 36 Dogwood Road, at a cost of $58,000, said Assistant City Manager Bailey Whited.
The griding work was to begin Wednesday, with the paving on Thursday and Friday, Whited said during Monday night’s City Council meeting.
City Manager Adam Ledford said earlier that Norris already had enough money in its current budget to cover the repaving on those sections.
But the city plans to extend the project on East Norris Road from Pine Road to Cedar Place, near Andersonville Highway, when money is budgeted for that.
“The bid for that section was for an additional $227,000, which essentially would run from Pine Road to the sewer plant (near Andersonville Highway),” Ledford said in June.
Norris does not yet have money set aside to pay for that additional work, he said.
The city was hoping to get some help from the Anderson County Board of Education for repaving East Norris and part of Dogwood roads, based on the heavy use of those roads by school buses serving Norris Middle School.
But Ledford told the City Council in June that the school system declined to help.
Although the contract was awarded to Duracap Asphalt in June, the repaving work was delayed until this month, pending completion of a sewer-rehabilitation project along the same route that included tearing up part of the existing pavement.
The sewer work began July 14, but is now finished along the routes to be repaved.
That work is designed to help reduce excess runoff of stormwater into the city’s sewer system, which has caused the city to run afoul of state environmental regulators.
Since early 2022, Norris has been under a “director’s order” from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to clean up its discharge of sewage into Buffalo Creek, just south of the sewer plant, which is on the west side of East Norris Road just north of Andersonville Highway.
The department found the city in violation of water-quality regulations concerning those discharges bypassing the sewage-treatment plant.