"Motorists should expect delays and are encouraged to plan accordingly." That is about all the Town of Bristol's October 15 traffic advisory says. Since Monday, October 19, Summer Street has been down to one lane between Merrimack Street and Baker Street from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM for "sewer main installation." The notice gives no end date and no reason the work is happening now. By this Thursday, October 29, the closure is ten days old, and it was never supposed to be a trench at all.
The town's own meeting minutes fill in the rest. The pipe going in under Summer Street is the new force main for Bristol's most important piece of sewer infrastructure. The street is open to the sky because the ground beneath it won a fight the town first tried to win with a drill.
The pipe under the cones
The work on Summer Street belongs to the Central Street Pump Station Replacement Project. In May 2025, Water and Sewer Superintendent Jeff Chartier told the Capital Improvements Program Committee it was an 18-month project costing "just shy of $4,000,000." He also said the Central Street station "takes about 98% of the Town's flow." Over the years the old station had gotten by on what the May 20, 2025 CIP minutes call "band aid fixes," including replacement variable frequency drives and other parts. The committee was told a new station should last about 50 years.
The new station needs a new pipe to push flow uphill. The project includes roughly 2,500 feet of force main, and its route explains exactly where the cones are:
- From the Central Street Pump Station
- Up Merrimack Street
- Onto Summer Street
- Into the gravity sewer on Baker Street
The stretch now down to one lane, Merrimack to Baker, is step three. The town's 2026 Consumer Confidence Report describes the same plan: a station replacement underway during 2025 and due to finish in 2026, plus force main replacement from Central Street along Merrimack Street to Summer Street and Baker Street.
How a drilling job became a trench
Horizontal directional drilling lets a crew bore a pipe underground from one pit to another while traffic keeps moving overhead. That was the plan. Here is how the record shows it falling apart:
- "December." The May 2025 CIP minutes say the 18-month project "started in December," without giving a year.
- September 2025. The Select Board reports that pump station work is "beginning soon," with a staging area at the corner of Summer Street and Merrimack Street. Signs are planned a couple of weeks ahead of the road sewer line work because of an expected bottleneck on Summer Street from LaValley's to Merrimack Street.
- January 2026. According to the January 8 Select Board minutes, directional drilling hit obstructions, including a water main, and the sewer line extension is pushed to spring 2026. Engineers find an alternate route with better clearance. Concrete work on the new pump house goes on, and a manhole is added at Baker Street to improve operations and cut down on bypass pumping.
- September 2026. The September 3 Select Board minutes record that open-cut installation has replaced the directional drill method. Contractors have run into "large boulders, ledge, and other underground utility challenges."
- October 19, 2026. Summer Street goes to one lane.
The two 2025 records don't quite match. One says the project started in December, and the other says the work was still "beginning soon" the following September. The likeliest reading is that the station side started first and the road work came later. Either way, the 2026 minutes show the schedule slipping well past 18 months, and they say why. A drill can't steer around solid ledge or a buried water main, so the fallback is to dig down, lay pipe and backfill. Doing that in the middle of NH 104 takes a lane.
What the ground has cost so far
Changing methods isn't free, and the Select Board has been paying for it from the Sewer Capital Reserve Fund. On September 3 the board voted 4-0-0 to approve a $40,950 amendment to the town's engineering agreement with Underwood Engineering. The minutes give the reason for the increase:
"project delays, schedule extensions, and redesigned work required after the directional drill method was replaced with open-cut installation and increased on-site engineering oversight and project management requirements."
At the same meeting, the board voted 4-0-0 to pay a separate $40,500 engineering cost from the same reserve. That cost had been approved as part of the overall project but never given a funding source.
Then there was asbestos, found while crews prepared the old station for demolition. The town got two removal quotes. The general contractor's recommended provider came in around $14,000, and a local contractor came in around $6,500. Chartier told the board the cost wasn't in the original budget because no one knew about the asbestos until testing. The board agreed the Town Administrator could use her authority to sign for the removal.
These sums are small next to a project of nearly $4 million. Every one of them traces back to things nobody could see before digging, which is the same reason the lane closure came so late in the schedule.
What still has to happen before November 30
The September 3 minutes give an anticipated completion date of November 30, 2026, about a month after this post goes up. That is a September target, set before the Summer Street lane closure began. Here is what was still on the list then:
- The bypass. It's already installed, which is what lets work go on while sewage keeps flowing.
- The Central Street road crossing. It hit ledge and was "delayed until a drill can be brought to the site."
- The force main itself. That includes the Summer Street segment now under way.
- Demolition of the old pump station and site restoration. Both are expected before the project closes out.
The town's advisory still has no end date for the one-lane restriction, and the Central Street crossing was waiting on equipment as of September. Treat November 30 as the town's goal, not a promise. Restrictions run 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, so trips on Summer Street before 8 or after 3 should miss the bottleneck. The town posts updates on its News Flash page, which is the most direct place to check for changes.
Summer Street will be opened again
Once this trench is backfilled, Summer Street has two more projects in the pipeline.
The town has more digging in mind. The July 28, 2026 CIP minutes describe the station project in progress, with about 2,500 feet of replacement force main along Central and Summer streets to Baker Street. The same minutes note that the town might seek other grants for a future replacement of the Summer Street water and sewer mains.
The state has a bigger plan for the road itself. NHDOT project 40636 covers NH 104/Summer Street improvements from School Street to Ayers Island Road, and the project page lists its status as Design. NHDOT's 2023 call for design consultants described preliminary alternatives for widening or rebuilding the road. It also described an active-transportation corridor with better bicycle and pedestrian facilities and streetscape elements. That document listed July 24, 2029 as the advertising date at the time. It was a scope for designers, not a construction plan, and the date may have moved.
NHDOT presented the proposal and took public comment on April 30, 2026, at Historic Old Town Hall, 45 Summer Street. When the project page was last checked, the meeting plan and presentation were still marked "coming soon." No final layout for intersections, sidewalks or bike lanes has been posted. Bristol's main road is in the middle of a sewer job this fall, and the state's redesign is still on the drawing board.
If you own a home or business near Summer Street and want to understand how the road work could affect a sale or purchase, I'm happy to talk it through, cones and all. Reach out to Juli Kelley or start with a free home valuation.
