Published: September 22, 2009 10:47 am      

Plenty of bids for CSO project

If you plan to build it, they will come.

Local and out-of-state contractors packed into the Police and Courts Building for the opening of bids regarding the city’s Combined Sewer Overflow reduction project at Monday’s meeting of the Board of Public Works and Safety. During the meeting, 31 bids on five aspects of the CSO project were opened.

Contractors from as far away as Rockville, Minn., were looking to underbid each other on a new wastewater supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, a new CSO detention facility, an Elkhart River crossing for the line, a 90-inch trunk line and a diversion pump station.

The SCADA system will modernize the operation of the city’s wastewater system. The detention facility will hold water that would be flushed into the Elkhart River while it is cleaned and any debris ground and removed. The river crossing is to bring water across to the detention facility. The trunk line and pump station will both divert water that formerly would have been flushed into the river to the detention facility.

Utilities Engineer Dustin Sailor was pleased with the turnout, as well as the bids. At an early glance, the combined total could be around $30 million, approximately $5 million less than some previous estimates.

“We won’t know until we actually do all the numbers,” Sailor said, “but initially the numbers look very good.”

Each of the subprojects had several bids with the exception of the SCADA system, for which only one bid was received.

“I anticipated a couple more on that one, but that portion is a very technical part of all this,” Sailor said. “There are a lot of electronic components, and everyone has to coordinate the communication and the wiring to make sure the water and the wastewater treatment plant operate correctly, so we’re hopeful that it all works out here.”

The opening of the bids marks another step forward for the project, which stems from an unfunded federal mandate requiring the elimination of CSO overflows into bodies of water.

“Once we look over everything and everything looks OK, we will go to council for acceptance, and then we also have to go to the state finance authority and request approval of the bidding so we can actually formally award the bid,” Sailor said. “At that point, we’ll be able to get a notice from them to bid the project and then we’ll send out a notice to the contractors to proceed.”

The wastewater SCADA system is expected to be the first portion completed, with estimated dates for construction to begin on Nov. 2, substantial completion by Oct. 15, 2010, and final completion by the end of that year.

In other business, the board awarded bids for the asphalt paving and concrete replacement projects. Niblock Excavating was awarded the asphalt project with the lowest bid at $268,879.96. Yaw Construction was awarded the concrete project with the lowest bid at $37,357.80.