Sewer Repairs Today Will Impact Lakeshore and Lake Hollingsworth Drives

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Some Lakeland drivers will need to add a few minutes to their commutes this week.

The city will replace broken sewer lines near two popular lakes.

Lake Hollingsworth Drive: A section of the road near the Lakeland Country Club will be cordoned off for two days starting Monday. The sewer work will be south of Lake Hollingsworth between Derbyshire and Buckingham Avenues.

Flaggers will guide vehicles through a single lane, alternating directions of traffic. The project will not affect walkers and joggers using the Lake Hollingsworth trail.

Lakeshore Drive: The second repair will be on Lakeshore Drive where it becomes West Lake Parker Drive about a block north of Memorial Boulevard.

The scenic lakeside road will be blocked from Bon Air Street to Garden Street for two days starting Tuesday.

City Communications Director Kevin Cook said residents of six properties in the work zone will be allowed to access their homes, but all other drivers will be detoured along Lake Avenue.

West Lake Parker Drive will be closed from June 3-4 for urgent sewer repairs. | City of Lakeland

Aging infrastructure

Emergency spot fixes are an ongoing challenge for the city. The same two roads had urgent sewer work in the past few months:

Lake Hollingsworth Drive was closed just east of Fairmount Avenue on May 19 for emergency sewer repairs that took several days.
West Lake Parker Drive was closed between Tropical Way and El Paseo from March 19-20 to replace clay pipes with PVC.

An old network: Lakeland has many clay sewer lines that were installed between the 1920s and 1950s and have been lined or patched due to cracking and crumbling. It also has ductile iron lines installed in the 1970s and 1980s that are failing due to corrosion.

Addressing the problem: The city is undertaking a massive $77.7 million project to address its most urgent wastewater problem: rerouting and replacing the 2.6-mile Western Trunk Line, which serves the western and southern parts of the city.

That is not the only area where sewer lines are failing.

There was an urgent, nearly $2 million project at Griffin Road for six weeks in April and May 2023 to prevent a “large-scale failure” after an unlined ductile iron pipe collapsed.

The city’s Wastewater Department is working to replace all of the city’s aging lines. It’s a costly and labor-intensive undertaking that won’t be done any time soon.