On September 25, Hatfield Township cleared another hurdle to break ground on one of its largest roadway projects in recent years. The project at task is to realign the highly congested intersection of Orvilla Road and Cowpath Road. Those familiar with this area, know that the in order to stay on Orvilla, you must make a right turn onto Cowpath Road to immediately make a left to return to Orvilla. This section of Hatfield gets highly congested and makes traffic a nightmare for anyone looking to get around. Recently, the city has acquired 3 houses along Orvilla with the plan to demolish them for their new road realignment. Well, as of September 25, this demolition finally began, thanks to the Operating Engineers at Local 542.

Now that Hatfield was setting their plans on realigning Orvilla Road, they needed to figure out what it would cost tax payers to remove these 3 houses. Estimates were in the range of $75,000, which Hatfield Township thought was high but necessary. This all changed when their town Commissioner, Local 542’s Larry Hughes, stepped in and said that the Operating Engineers will donate their time and resources to demolish these houses instead. Hatfield Township couldn’t turn down such a great offer and so on September 25, 2018, demo began.

This partnership is a win-win for both Hatfield Township and Local 542. Hatfield saves their residents roughly $75,000 in tax payers dollars and the apprentices in the JATC get some real-life demolition experience. It is great exposure for Local 542 as well. Previously, work in Hatfield has been hard to get for 542. Now, Hatfield residents are seeing just one of many benefits that the union can bring to their area. Hopefully, this will be the start of many projects for Local 542 in this township.

As of mid-October, the three houses were completely demoed. Now, Hatfield is at a standstill as they wait for the approval of grant money. It will cost roughly $1.9 million to align these two state roads and Hatfield is hoping that the state will help offset some of this cost.

"Now, after all that, all we need is the state to come up with the grant money to realign two state roads," Hughes said.

Hopefully they will receive funding for this project soon and more importantly, hopefully they will return the favor and build it union.