T-L Photos/GAGE VOTA St. Clairsville Service Director Scott Harvey tells City Council that he believes the dredging of the reservoir needs to begin as soon as possible so they don’t have to delay the project due to inclement weather. Pictured from left to right: President of Council Jim Velas, Service Director Scott Harvey, and Mayor Kathryn Thalman.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — After months of searching, the St. Clairsville City Council has accepted a bid for the dredging of the city’s reservoir.

The winning bid was for $132,934 by Miller Excavating Inc.

St. Clairsville Service Director Scott Harvey believes it is crucial for the reservoir to be dredged as soon as possible due to the changing of the weather.

“The temperature is kind of a driving factor now because as it gets colder and they dredge this, they’ll of course load it into dump trucks and haul it away,” Harvey said. “And those trucks will naturally leak some of the water onto the road which will then freeze and become a safety issue for traffic. It’s important that we do it before the temperature drops down to the 20s because we can still work on this as it’s in the 30s and if it hits the lower 30s, that’d be nice.”

Harvey added that if the project wasn’t able to begin soon, it will more than likely have to be pushed back several months.

“It needs to be done now,” Harvey said. “If we don’t do it now, then it’ll probably be delayed until next summer and there’s a good chance the reservoir will be full again.”

Another reason Harvey believes that the project needs to be started as soon as possible is the fact that the reservoir which has been depleted for months is now replenishing itself.

“As the reservoir fills back up it becomes more difficult to dredge,” he said. “Naturally, as it’s empty they can get down deeper into the reservoir where the areas are more drier and they can reach further out and get more material out. As the reservoir refills it becomes more difficult to dredge.”

Harvey said that a St. Clairsville area landowner Dave Callipari has volunteered his property to be the dump site of the dirt that’s dredged from the reservoir. He said that Callipari allowed the city to dump the dirt on his property without any fee.

“The landowner agreed to let us dump it there and once it dries it’ll be dozed or smoothed over onto his large field,” he said. “We’re not paying to dump the dirt, we’re just paying for the transportation from the reservoir to where we dump the dirt.”

Harvey said that although Miller Excavating doesn’t have an official start date, he expects the project to get underway within the next week as long as the weather permits.

“We’re going to look at the weather for the next week and we’re hoping that they can get started next week,” he said.