Onondaga County sewer project brings trenching near Reed Webster Park

The trenching near Reed Webster Park in Camillus was part of a county sewer overhaul meant to keep wastewater moving from the Village and Town of Camillus to the Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant on Hiawatha Boulevard. Onondaga County said the black pipes visible off Warners Road were a temporary line holding sewage while crews rehabilitated a 24-inch pressurized force main that has been in service for more than 40 years. The work was not tied to private development or park improvements; it was core infrastructure maintenance aimed at keeping an aging system reliable before a failure turns into a larger emergency.

For families who use Reed Webster Park, the construction was impossible to miss, but the park remained open during the work. The county said it was using cured-in-place pipe lining, a method that strengthens the existing main from the inside and reduces surface disruption compared with a full replacement. Steam may be used during curing and can create a temporary chemical odor, and the county said residents do not need to reduce water use during construction. It also said excavated areas will be backfilled and restored, with disturbed lawns, driveways and roadways returned to pre-construction conditions or better.

County project materials listed the job as a 2025-2027 capital improvement, with work beginning in December 2025 and expected to finish by March 2027. The county said the average disturbance at any single property should last about five weeks, with much of the surface restoration in the Woodmont Drive neighborhood expected between July 2026 and November 2026. That timeline puts the visible trenching near Reed Webster Park into a longer sequence of staged work meant to keep sewage service uninterrupted while the permanent line is brought up to standard.

State environmental notices showed the broader Phase 2 project covered 28,670 linear feet of force main and associated manhole structures. Those filings also described a 3,000-foot new alignment to avoid a congested residential area and a fully structural cured-in-place liner about half an inch thick. The paperwork had already advanced through environmental review before residents saw the active digging, underscoring that this was a long-planned overhaul of one of western Onondaga County’s most important public works systems.