Workers dig a trench down Fairbank Street, just off the Common. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Crews laying pipe in town center streets will wrap up their work next week and “button up” for the winter.

“I can only hold the snow off for so long,” Town Administrator Tim Bragan joked Wednesday at the weekly meeting of the Town Center Sewer Building Committee.

With the last asphalt plant in central Massachusetts closing at the end of the month, Project Manager Tom Ferraiuolo of Ricciardi Bros., the general contractor hired by the town for the project, told the group that company crews would finish laying sewer mains on Littleton Road and Old Boston Turnpike by the end of next week, and then pave over their work.

During the year-end school holiday, crews will also finish work behind Hildreth Elementary School and do some tree cutting between the school and the site of the wastewater treatment plant.

“We want to get the work done while the kids are away,” said Jim Ricciardi, Ricciardi Bros. owner.

A manhole gets installed at the corner of Littleton and Fairbank streets.

Ricciardi also reported that his crews have found that the asphalt on Littleton and Old Littleton roads is deeper than expected—up to 14 inches—requiring the use of a hydraulic hammer to break it up for removal.

“If we just used a backhoe,” he told the Press, “we could inadvertently lift the entire section of road.”

With the arrival of spring, work on town center streets will resume, including those that border the Common.

After the holidays, in January, project crews will begin renovation of the treatment plant on Massachusetts Avenue. The upgrade will come none too soon. Since early fall, the plant has been operating outside the biological parameters set by the state Department of Environmental Protection, which violates the terms of its operating license.