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City Council reviews water, sewage plant projects

Marietta City Council’s Water and Sewer Committee met jointly with its Finance Committee to review cost savings and projections for current water and wastewater projects Tuesday.

Renovations to the city’s wastewater treatment plant continue with Phase III, Scopes 2 and 3 currently underway.

“I love to start a scope of a project out this way,” said City Engineer Joe Tucker as he explained a deduction of costs for the heating, venting and cooling system for the plant’s sewage receiving building. “The original plan was to place the HVAC unit within the building but the anti-spark materials needed for that would have cost more than just placing the unit on the roof of the building. This will also be less operational and maintenance costs over the long term.”

The net savings of $7,927.92 bring down the cost of construction from $5,827,000 to $5,819,072.08.

The project will see an added cost of $4,050 to its engineering contract with Stantec Consulting to raise the walls of a reception pit at the plant to prevent flooding if the Ohio River rises.

Tucker said the additional 1.5 feet of reinforced concrete walls will later add to the overall cost of construction but that engineering needed to be provided first before that estimate would be available.

“But we still after the reduction and this addition have $40,000 remaining in the Ohio Water Development Authority Loan,” he said.

The total loan amount for Scopes 2 and 3 of the project is $6,806,966.77 at an interest rate of 0.57 percent to be paid between July 2018 and January 2048.

“We expect the project to be complete by the end of November this year,” added Tucker.

Eric Lambert, engineering project manager, also brought the committees the projected costs and OWDA loan proposal for the city’s water treatment plant ground storage tank rehabilitation and painting project.

Lambert said the estimated cost of the project is $1,324,319 and the current interest rate for the loan through OWDA is 3.03 percent.

The last time the tank was cleaned and painted was in 2002 and according to the treatment plant’s operations and needs review the tank will reach a critical condition within the next few years.

“The tank is 2 million gallons and the contractors that end up winning the bid will have to not only build a containment over it but also rigging within it to sand blast and paint the tank and do roof repairs,” explained Lambert. “The cost to replace a tank of comparable size would be upwards of $8 million to $10 million.”

Tucker said the interest in the project from painting contractors may lower the overall price of the project and if that is the case, then the loan can be adjusted down accordingly.

“It seems like an attractive job to the 12 plan holders that have picked up plans for the job to prepare to submit bids,” said Tucker. “This is a good time to be getting prices on this.”

Bids for the project will be open by March 2.

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