A project to replace downtown Brownsville’s old pedestrian street lamps with new, more energy-efficient lighting fixtures has run into a couple of snags.
The pilot project entailed 15 new lights and poles along East Elizabeth Street downtown. The work began late last year and was completed in time for Charro Days, though now the lights have been switched off until certain issues can be resolved, such as the fact that delivery trucks have been accidentally running into and damaging some of the new fixtures.
Unlike the old design, the new LED lights overhang the street, which makes them vulnerable if the pole is of insufficient height.
“We are having an issue in the areas where we have delivery trucks,” said City Engineer Doroteo Garcia Jr. “They have hit … the (light) skirt, or the guard basically.”
No one thought it would be an issue since most trucks make their deliveries in the alleys, despite the obvious exceptions, he said.
“Where we have city bus stops we’ve turned the lights away so they’re hanging over the sidewalk instead of the street,” Garcia said. “We did that where we knew we were going to have an issue with the buses. With the other ones, we didn’t anticipate delivery trucks.”
The city has already talked to the supplier about how to fix the problem, he said.
“They’re going to send us an arm extension, basically to raise it about three feet,” Garcia said. “We’re going to try it out and see how that works before we proceed on ordering that for all the lights.”
If the results are satisfactory, the city will install the extensions on every new pole for the sake of uniformity. The vendor is also sending 10 replacement shields and five new crystals free of charge, though the city will have to pay for the extensions, which may cost in the neighborhood of $1,500 a piece, Garcia said.
All told, the street-light-replacement project involves 164 new fixtures and poles along Elizabeth, Adams and Washington streets downtown. The cost is being paid by the Musk Foundation, which last year pledged $10 million toward downtown revitalization. The original estimate for the project was a little over $855,000. The foundation has already covered one cost overrun, and the city is hoping that will be the case again, Garcia said.
Another issue has impeded the street-light project: corrosion. The city decided to reuse the existing concrete bases that support the light poles when most of them were found to be in good condition during the Elizabeth Street pilot phase. Out of the original 15, only three were damaged, so the city decided to proceed with the full project, but then discovered that dozens of bases in the other locations actually needed repairs.
“We’ve had to repair the anchor bolts, the bolts that hold the light fixture down,” he said. “We were able to salvage all of the concrete bases so far.”
With the Elizabeth Street lights out of commission, the city has been making do with temporary construction-site lighting to illuminate that part of down, which Garcia admitted is not an ideal situation. But the Elizabeth Street lights should be back on and the overall project under way again soon, he said.
“I’m thinking it’ll probably be, I hope, by the end of the month we’ll be lit up,” Garcia said. “We’re going to resume the installation of the downtown lights. I don’t think it’ll be this week but for sure the beginning of next week.”
