Weatherly Borough Council on Monday got an update on a state project that has Hudsondale Street in the borough down to one lane near the bridge over Hazle Creek.

Borough Manager Harold Pudliner said that they met with the project engineers, the state Department of Transportation, Verizon and the contractor regarding moving utilities.

Six utility poles need to be removed from the bridge down along Hudsondale Street to allow them to repair the failing retaining wall, he said.

They plan on starting the project in 2026, Pudliner said, and the borough wants to get its utility lines off the poles as soon as possible.

“I don’t know how you feel, but when you look at that wall, I don’t think it’s going to make it to 2026,” he said to council. “We said to them, we want to move exponentially and get moving off these poles.”

Traffic on Hudsondale Street is now controlled by stop signs around the closed lane of travel next to the failing retaining wall along the creek.

Pudliner said that secured easements and rights of way to put poles on private properties for the project to continue to service homes on top of the hill and Warner’s Garage and ensure primary and backup service remains intact.

Pudliner told the project manager that they’re ready to move ahead with moving the utility lines and poles, and she said that the borough has some paperwork to do first.

The borough has to go through a utility relocation management system to start the process, and the manual for the software is 178 pages long.

“So we’re in the process right now of wading our way through their systems that we can get our secondaries off and then work on our primaries to get them off of there,” Pudliner said.

He said that he’s pushing to get the work done this summer because it’s the start of hurricane season, and forecasters are predicting 10 named storms this year.

“We could get the remnants of any of those storms up here and that wall will probably go down along with our utility poles,” Pudliner said. “So, we’re working very strongly on getting our poles moved.”

He also asked for a provision with the project that when the wall is repaired that they allow for the poles to be placed in their original locations, and the borough doesn’t have to drill into the new construction to install them, he said.

“That’s pretty much where we’re at,” Pudliner said. “I’m just leery about the weather and the rising of this stream one time to take down that wall, and then it’s going to be panic time.

“And I don’t want to panic. I want us to be ready.”