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Aug 20, 2023

Arlington SB discusses improvements for fire department, Black Hole Hollow

ARLINGTON — There are improvements afoot in the Town of Arlington. Discussion surrounding some of the Fire Department’s needs arose at last Monday night’s Select Board meeting when the board began

ARLINGTON — There are improvements afoot in the Town of Arlington.

Discussion surrounding some of the Fire Department’s needs arose at last Monday night’s Select Board meeting when the board began discussing items related to the budget.

In an interview last week, Arlington Town Administrator Nick Zaiac said a greater portion of the department’s gear is reaching the end of its useful life. The town is looking to replace some of that gear in the next several weeks.

“It’s going to depend on what prices we have in the next couple of weeks, so it could be any combination of air packs, bottles and turnout gear,” said Zaiac in an interview.

While replacing some of the fire department’s gear is the most immediate improvement that will be made, there are others that are coming up both for next year and beyond that were discussed at the meeting.

One of the projects that is expected to occur at some point in 2024 is the improvement of four dry hydrants, two in Arlington and two in Sunderland.

“The board is considering approaching the Sunderland Select Board to see if they want to cooperate on some of these dry hydrant upgrades,” Zaiac said.

Part of the reason there is focus for next year is that grants are available to help fund those projects. Preliminary discussions with Sunderland to potentially collaborate on the project are expected to take place in the coming weeks, Zaiac said.

A long-term improvement that the board will also be examining is upgrading the self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) bottle filling pump. Zaiac said the upgrade is not something that the town will be addressing this year as it would require more specific planning. The cost to replace the pump is somewhat substantial and is expected to cost somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000.

One potential source of funding for some of the improvements could come from the money the town received as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Zaiac said the town would consider using some of those funds for the upgrades as relevant.

Another subject that the town discussed at last Monday’s meeting were the repairs that needed to be made to Black Hole Hollow — a remote portion of Arlington’s road network. Zaiac said the cost and time of getting equipment out to the location, coupled with the lack of fuel availability near Black Hole Hollow has discouraged the town from performing the same level of ditch maintenance and vegetation management that is performed in other areas of the town.

The majority of the work will be cutting back vegetation so that the plows in the winter don’t sustain damage from overhanging or high vegetation that has built up over several years. The project will take about seven days to complete, with about four or five days spent on mowing and approximately three days to perform ditch work.

“There will … be about 27 hours of ditch cleaning associated with this project that will improve drainage infrastructure along the road and make it less prone to storm damage and washouts in the future,” Zaiac said. “So, it’s kind of a dual-prong project that has vegetation management as item number one and ditch improvement and bringing the ditches up to code as item number two.”

The town believes that work on the area will take place sometime in the next month or two.