The construction may be over, but the PUD’s part of the work on Port Townsend’s downtown is just ramping up, according to Will O’Donnell, communications manager for the Jefferson County Public Utility District.

“The good news is, our work should be a lot less invasive,” O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell was speaking to the members of the Port Townsend Main Street Program July 25, in the wake of the Water Street construction project, during which the PUD installed conduits under the street for the utility lines that currently adorn the skyline of downtown Port Townsend.

O’Donnell explained those utility lines would be “under-grounded” during the course of the next year, starting with the section between the ferry terminal intersection to the Sanderling building, from August through September of this year.

“We’ll be transferring the lines underground, and hooking up the businesses as we go,” O’Donnell said. “But the power poles won’t come down until the new street lights have been installed.”

O’Donnell estimated the service connections would require outages of 2-6 hours, and pledged the PUD would do its best to schedule those times when they would work best for the businesses, but also acknowledged, “We won’t be able to accommodate everyone on that front.”

The next segment of Port Townsend’s downtown, between the Sanderling building and Polk Street, O’Donnell predicted would run from October to November of this year, while he expected the Tyler Street under-grounding to last from October through December.

“Along with the electrical wires, we’ll be removing the overhead transformers as well,” O’Donnell said. “During our work on and behind Tyler Street, we’ll bore a conduit tunnel under Washington Street, to bring the electrical service from the street up above, to the new underground system below on Tyler Street.”

After that comes the biggest section, covering Tyler, Water and Taylor streets, from January to May of next year, with the Bishop Victorian Hotel and Quincy Street following after the summer of 2019.

“The new ground-mounted transformers will be square green cabinets, cut back against the hillside behind the businesses off of both Polk and Tyler streets,” O’Donnell said. “We can’t take the poles down until we replace the street lights, and get firm timelines from Wave and CenturyLink to remove their wires from our poles. We’re still negotiating with them to get a firm timeline.”

O’Donnell expressed confidence the traffic disruption would be minimal.

“There shouldn’t be that many lane closures,” O’Donnell said. “We’ll try to conduct our work during the morning hours, and our service trucks should only take up one or two parking spaces. We know the impact that the Water Street construction project already have on your businesses, so we’ll try not to impinge upon you further.”