As part of a major renovation plan throughout Westside District, Sunset Hills Elementary School and Oakdale Elementary are undergoing construction to get new buildings.
Project Advocates, a company leading the construction and serving as the owners’ representative for Westside Community Schools, says they’re trying to avoid making upcoming construction operations a messy process.
"We have to take this down about six feet to get to the new elevation of where the new Oakdale is going to be,” says Joel McWilliams.
The Oakdale Elementary site currently sits six feet above the elevation of where the new school will be - which means 24,000 square yards of dirt will need to be removed.
"Ironically, in a good way, we also need 24,000 square yards of dirt at another project we're using over at Sunset Hills Elementary,” says McWilliams.
In efforts to recycle the dirt to avoid additional costs to taxpayers for new soil at Sunset Hills Elementary School, McWilliams says transporting the dirt helps both projects.
To transfer more than 2,000 trucks of dirt in a month’s span, almost 40-50 truckloads each day, workers will need to drive through residential neighborhoods to make trips efficient.
"Any time you have a lot of traffic going through a residential neighborhood there's going to be some inconveniences so we've kind of taken the stance and we wanted to go ahead and get a head of it so we talked to the neighbors, sent out flyers, here's what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, and what to expect and why we're going to do it,” adds McWilliams.
The trucks will be taking one of two routes, affecting mostly Central Omaha between 94th and 96th Streets – and Walnut and Shirley Streets.
The transportation of the dirt will begin on Monday, September 26th and will be going on six days a week, Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
McWilliams says they’re asking neighbors to park on the odd number or south side of streets during restricted times to make the transportation process as smooth as possible.
"We're restricting hours and restricting times of when we can go in and out, and then we're also every day we're making sure that we go clean the streets so there's no debris in the streets,” says McWilliams.
Crews hope to complete the transportation of dirt by October 26th.
