NORWICH — The City of Norwich Common Council discussed their options for replacing the water mains in downtown Norwich during the joint committees meeting on Monday, January 3.

The area where pipes need to be replaced include South Broad Street and East Main Street, with the oldest pipes in that section dating back as far as 1881, and others dated around the early 1900s.

The Norwich Department of Public Works (DPW) Superintendent Ed Pepe explained that replacing everything at once would cost the city approximately $6.5 million.

"We submitted a grant application to USDA to replace the water mains on Broad Street and on East Main, for about six and a half million dollars. The USDA came back with some preliminary feedback, and said that most of the funding would be in the form of low interest loans, with only some of it being in the form of a grant," said Pepe.

Pepe said he met with Director of Finance Dee DuFour and City of Norwich Mayor Brian Doliver to discuss other options for the project, and came up with two additional choices for council members to consider.

"We discussed how the water department can’t really take on a lot more debt, because we already have $500,000 in annual debt service," he said. "So we decided to take a look at this and try to narrow the scope a little bit, and shoot for something a little bit smaller, probably cost around three million [dollars] is what we were thinking."