By Eric Stock

BLOOMINGTON – Some Nicor Gas customers in Bloomington will be noticing some changes in the coming weeks.

The energy company will be upgrading its infrastructure in neighborhoods east of downtown, replacing natural gas mains, inspecting sewer lines and putting in new gas lines and meters when necessary starting July 15.

“People ask ‘How often do you evaluate the systems?’,” Community Relations and Economic Development manager Bernie Anderson said. “It’s an ongoing evaluation and they’ve determined over the next 15, 20 years these are these areas that should be looked at for replacement.”

Anderson said this is the first phase in a three-step plan to upgrade the gas company’s infrastructure in Bloomington. Downtown will be done next year, then northwest of downtown will come in 2017. The first phase costs nearly $500,000.

He said all customers in the area will be impacted.

“We will be out in their front yards and the parkway and we will be installing new mains and retiring the old mains,” Anderson said. “At that point, once we get the new main installed, we will be running new service to all of those buildings that currently have natural gas.”

Anderson said the company plans to be done by mid-September before the city starts some road resurfacing projects. He said it’s a logical order of events, but something that hasn’t always happened in the past.

“Has the city ever (repaved) streets and then here come Nicor Gas six months later tearing everything up? Yes,” Anderson said. “We were getting better at it. Over the last probably 10 years the City of Bloomington and Town of Normal have worked very closely with Nicor Gas.

Anderson said customers might face a service interruption of about 30 minutes when the switch is made to a new gas main.

Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].