Major Evansville water and sewer project brings another road closure

Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press
·2 min read

EVANSVILLE – An ongoing sewer project will bring significant road closures well into next month, the Evansville Water & Sewer Utility announced.

Due to the work on Walnut Street, Weinbach Avenue between the Lloyd Expressway and Lincoln Avenue will be blocked to thru traffic starting Monday morning, the utility wrote in a Facebook post.

The closure is expected to last about 45 days, or until about late November. It will heavily affect motorists trying to reach the University of Evansville campus, which stands right off the shuttered roadway.

Local traffic, or people who live on the closed portion of the road, can still get through.

But there will be a complete closure at the intersection of Weinbach and Walnut, the western-most border of the long-gestating Walnut Street sewer project that's seen the road torn apart and rebuilt multiple times over the last year-and-a-half.

Sewer work on Walnut Street in Evansville is bringing yet another road closure as the project moves toward its 2024 completion date.
Sewer work on Walnut Street in Evansville is bringing yet another road closure as the project moves toward its 2024 completion date.

"The closure is necessary to safely complete work on the Walnut Street Improvement Project Phase 2, which includes the installation of new storm and sanitary sewers, sidewalks, ADA ramps and traffic signals," the post reads.

Since May 2022, workers have been installing new water mains and storm sewers from Weinbach to Vann avenues. The work has shut down Walnut for more than a mile, with only local traffic allowed between Boeke and Weinbach. By the time the $13 million project wraps up, more than a mile of new PVC pipe will run under the asphalt.

Project engineer Josh Craig, with American Structurepoint, told the Courier & Press in July that he expects the work to finish around March 2024.

The project has been a long and complicated one. He said it was initially supposed to be done in "phases," but the different stages have blended together over time.

"There have been times we’ve been working on Phase 1 and Phase 2 all at once just because of logistics,” he said.

The Weinbach-Walnut intersection has been especially troublesome. When there was a staggered barricade in place, motorists traveling in opposite directions had a hard time squeezing around one another. And the presence of that extra traffic could potentially put workers at risk, he said.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Major Evansville water and sewer project brings another road closure