Dirt piles dwarf Empire no more

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
Darlene Friend at the Empire Village Office says Front Street will be paved by November 15, the opening day of gun deer season when the asphalt company closes down. “We really wanted to have the asphalt done by winter, and they’re pretty close to being on time. When the water sample we sent on Halloween is approved by the Great Lakes Water Quality Lab in Lake Ann,” Darlene continues, “they can build the well house and start connecting homes to the system.”

Joe Sullivan, superintendent of the water main and storm infiltration project for CJ’s Excavating, says everything should be done by December 1. “You always find things in the ground you didn’t know was there in these old towns,” Joe tells me. “But nothing worth anything. The village DPW and the people have been real patient, and that helps a lot. Now there’s a new water main and big storm infiltrators under the street. The storm water will percolate down into the ground and not into the creeks and lakes.”
The Village of Empire received a grant of $242K from the Clean Michigan Initiatives and got a $650K USDA Rural Development loan. The last water system project was in 1980. Empire’s first village water system was a used one purchased from the village of Lake Ann in 1895 after a big fire there.
Darlene continues work on the M-22 road project slated for Fall 2006 or Spring 2007 when the big dirt piles will return to Empire. They will come with a $650K MDOT grant just signed by Governor Granholm that includes infiltrators, new pavement and sidewalks, and a green space as part of the M-22 Heritage Route designation.