Starting on July 5, a stretch of Goulden Avenue, from 205th Street to about one block north, will be entirely closed off to traffic as workers connect water pipes underneath the street. The pipes will connect the Jerome Park Reservoir to the new water filtration plant being built in Van Cortlandt Park.

The Department of Environmental Protection, which is managing the project, says that stretch of Goulden Avenue will be closed until school resumes in early September, at which point the DEP will open one lane of traffic going in each direction.

Before the opening, motorists and the BX10 bus will be detoured down Paul Avenue, which is parallel to Goulden.

The construction to begin this summer is one of two segments. The second, on Goulden Avenue adjacent to Gate House No. 7 at the reservoir, is expected to start at an undisclosed time in 2012, and will take four to five months, though DEP spokesman Michael Stasiak said some work outside the street boundary will take longer.

Stasiak said minimizing disruption to Bronx Science motivated the decision to do the projects separately. “The excavation across from Bronx HS of Science is the priority, as the work must be completed for operation of the filtration plant [in Van Cortlandt Park],” said Stasiak in an e-mail. “If we wait, we would miss the opportunity to get the noisy work outside Bronx HS of Science started when school is out of session this summer.”

Bronx Science is not the only school to be affected by the construction. Several others, including Lehman College, DeWitt Clinton High School, and High School for American Studies, are very close to where the work will take place.

Clinton Principal Geraldine Ambrosio said students do not take that route and will be largely unaffected by the traffic change, but noted other small inconveniences may arise. “It’ll probably congest the other areas — if they go down Paul Avenue. We have a lot of teachers who use that parking [on Goulden Avenue], and the neighborhood people park there overnight,” Ambrosio said.

The DEP also said it will not use rock blasting, another controversial issue, and will excavate with drilling instead.
The DEP says once school is back in session it will do quiet work during school hours and save louder work for late afternoon, when classes have ended.

The filtration plant is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2012.