Last week, Cranberry’s Board of Supervisors marked the culmination of three Township projects linking its northern and southern areas more closely.
Along Executive Drive and Thomson Park Drive – which were themselves joined in 15 years ago by a Township-financed bridge over Coal Creek – a new 24-inch water main connecting the Township’s southern water circuit and storage system with its northern counterpart, has now been completed. The line will allow the Township to take full advantage of the powerful new Commonwealth pump station completed earlier this year on Pennwood Drive in Thorn Hill Industrial Park.
The new pipeline, which runs from Freedom Road to Rochester Road, will provide as much water as planners anticipate the Township needing once the community is fully built out, which they estimate could take place by 2030. It will also insure the maintenance of desired water levels in Cranberry’s west and north storage tanks, both of which are served by the Township’s 16-inch northern water circuit.
In a ceremonial inauguration of the new water line, Board members joined to turn the arms of an oversize wrench opening the valve in a vault below ground level.
During construction, as the new water line’s trench was being filled, the Township directed the project’s contractor pour a new cement sidewalk above the pipeline instead of covering it with grass and shrubbery. The 2,600 feet of new sidewalk connects with other sidewalk segments which had previously been in place alongside the road. As a result, pedestrians are now able to walk the mile from Freedom Road to Rochester Road without stepping into traffic lanes.
A symbolic test walk of the sidewalk by Township staff members was held on August 29. It joins a rapidly growing network of sidewalks and trails in different areas of Cranberry which have either recently been completed, are now being built, or whose construction is planned for the near future.
Slightly west of the new water line and sidewalk, a second major pipeline project is also now largely complete. Within the last week, a new sewer main running along Brush Creek from the sewage treatment plant on Powell Road to Cranberry’s southern border with Marshall Township, was placed into service. The five-mile pipeline, known as Interceptor One, carries wastewater from all parts of Cranberry into the Brush Creek plant.
“These projects will enable Cranberry to grow the way we have visualized in our comprehensive plan,” Board Chairman Bruce Mazzoni noted. “They also will keep our sewer and water infrastructure in top operating condition for the foreseeable future. And the sidewalk we just completed reflects a need our residents have consistently cited for better pedestrian connections within the Township.”
The three projects, with a total cost of approximately $10 million, will serve both to integrate Cranberry’s waterworks infrastructure and to implement its bicycle-pedestrian circulation plan more fully than at any time in the Township’s history.