City, NIPSCO officials to discuss future resurfacing plan

Jul. 4—The city of Kokomo and NIPSCO plan to meet this week with the goal of agreeing on a resurfacing plan for downtown and near downtown streets tore up during the utility company's massive modernization project.

"We have had communication with representatives from NIPSCO about the restoration efforts downtown, as well as the recent ones on Phillips Street," Mayor Tyler Moore said in a text Friday. "We have scheduled a meeting for next week to discuss these in order to mutually agree to a plan to address them going forward."

The meeting between the two entities comes after Moore publicly said last Tuesday during a Coffee and Conversation event put on by the Greater Kokomo Chamber of Commerce that the city was not happy with how NISPCO resurfaced North Philips Street between West Sycamore and West Havens Street.

For at least several weeks, the stretch between West Sycamore and West Havens streets was bumpy and uneven as if it was littered with potholes because of work done to upgrade natural gas lines in the area as part of the utility company's multi-phase modernization project.

A June 9 Facebook post made to the Kokomo Chatter group bemoaned the state of the road at the time. The post garnered 40 reactions and 30 comments, most of which were also complaining about the state of that stretch of North Philips Street.

The utility company has said previously it would restore any area that was disrupted as a result of the work. Recently, NIPSCO did resurface most of North Philips Street between West Sycamore and West Havens street. As a result, it's not a bumpy ride anymore, but the city was expecting the full stretch of road to be resurfaced, not just parts of it.

"I apologize for how long it took the utilities to come together and get that redone," Moore said. "The one utility company (NISPCO) did go ahead and repave, but because they didn't do it in the matter we had politely asked them to, because it's kinda spotty and had a lot of seams ... we're going to go in and do it right, curb to curb, instead of checkerboard and get it back to a state we had anticipated the utility company would put it back in."

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for NIPSCO said the company is "confident" it followed proper restoration standards but added that the company is "committed to working directly with city officials to best determine a reasonable and mutually agreeable path toward satisfactory resolution."

NIPSCO is currently in its last phase of a three year, $148 million modernization project of the entire natural gas distribution system in the city that the company says will make the system more reliable and safe. The project includes installing approximately 67 miles of new plastic mainline gas pipeline, an estimated 5,800 new customer gas service lines and an estimated 5,600 new customer gas meter upgrades.

Tyler Juranovich can be reached at 765-454-8577, by email at tyler.juranovich@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter at @tylerjuranovich.