York Town News
Safety first for York Water District along Chase's Pond
By Jennifer L. Saunders
Pictured on the left is a view of the road before the guardrail with a recent photo of how it looks now. The brown core-10 guardrail, right, was selected to address neighborhood concerns about the appearance of a galvanized guardrail along the picturesque pond.
Photos courtesy of the York Water District
YORK - The York Water District has installed a new guardrail along Chase's Pond Road where the rural roadway winds toward the pond.
The project was devised in an effort to prevent an accident from happening, as wintry weather or slippery pavement could make for a future tragedy - and contaminate drinking water - if a vehicle were to skid off the road and into the pond, explained York Water District Superintendent Don Neumann.
Neumann said the guardrail has been part of the district's watershed protection plan.
The road shoulder has also been improved for pedestrians and a rail was selected in keeping with neighbors' concerns about the appearance of the road.
"The speed of the traffic, the curve of the road and the road's close proximity to the reservoir led to the installation of the guardrail," explained Gary Stevens of the York Water District.
The district weighed safety against aesthetics for such options as wooded rails or boulders, and chose the one that would best prevent an accident where a car could enter the pond. Stevens said the view is pretty, and the district worked to create a plan that would not mar the vista.
"The whole idea was to keep traffic out of the pond. When it gets slippery, especially the first storms of the year when the pond isn't frozen, it just looked like an accident waiting to happen when we started looking at it," Stevens said. "The traffic on this curve travels too fast. The speed limit is 40 MPH through this section of Chase's Pond Road, which in our opinion - and the neighbors - is too fast."
The goal was to be proactive, and the state of Maine drinking water program supported the plan.
"Anything within 1,000 feet of the intake you've got to go all out to protect it," Stevens said.
