A significant project by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority is set to close parts of West Rosemary Street for roughly 18 months starting this fall. The focus of the West Rosemary project is replacing a water main line that’s more than 80 years old. OWASA Capital Project Manager Darren Berger says the Chapel Hill-Carrboro agency has maintained the line for roughly 50 of those years, which included several repairs over the decades. “But over the last six years,” he says, “we’ve made three repairs – with two of those repairs being made in 2019 and the third being in 2022. That averages out to one [break] every two years, but the line itself [needs replacement] once they start breaking, they tend to break more often.” With that, the agency is preparing to replace more than 3,500 feet of the ductile iron pipe running the length of the road from the Carrboro town line to Chapel Hill’s Columbia Street. The project mirrors similar infrastructure work done by OWASA during the COVID-19 pand...