WATERVILLE — Access to Appleton Street will be limited starting Monday as contractors for Colby College replace a water main line and Central Maine Power Co. builds a new power line in the area.

Because the sewer lines are being relocated for the project, the Kennebec Water District is replacing the water main line and moving its position to protect it, said Jeff LaCasse, the water district’s general manager.

The older water main line probably would have been replaced some time after 2020, when the water district planned to retire a 30-year bond that funded building of a treatment plant and storage tanks and to take on a new bond to address infrastructure problems.

Colby College is helping foot the bill for the Appleton Street project, sharing about two-thirds of the cost, according to the latest agreement, LaCasse said.

Traffic will be allowed one way down Appleton toward Elm Street, but not toward Main Street. While all private and public parking lots will be available, on-street parking won’t be allowed while the work is in progress. Access to Appleton from The Concourse also will be closed.

The utility project, which is being completed by Landry/French Commercial Construction and subcontractor McGee Construction, is expected to take three weeks.

“This is like the first step in a game of checkers,” city engineer Greg Brown said. The goal is to get the contractors to complete all of the utility work at once so they don’t have to open the road up again for major work, he said.

On Wednesday, a separate project is scheduled to begin connecting the Hains building to the public water main line on Main Street. The existing connection will be abandoned because it isn’t adequate and can’t carry the same amount of water as it did when it was first built.

The project has yet to be approved by Brown or the Public Works Department. While Brown said he doesn’t think the request is unreasonable, he hasn’t seen all of the details yet.

Brown said he would like to have more advance notice of projects that will disrupt traffic, but he understands that it’s often difficult to get that at the beginning of a project that has so many details.

“Occasionally a situation arises where we’d have to be a little more flexible to get the project moving,” he said. “In this particular case, because there is no road closure and it’s a short duration, we have more flexibility.”

PC Construction and subcontractor Ranger Contracting Inc., will do the work on the Hains building project, which should take two days to complete. Some angled parking on the west side of Main Street starting before the Hains building and ending a few hundred feet past it will be closed off to allow for a lane shift to maintain the two lanes.

Madeline St. Amour — 861-9239

mstamour@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @madelinestamour