Posted on February 21, 2019
Kokosing Industrial Inc. on Tuesday was awarded a construction contract from the Terre Haute Board of Sanitary Commissioners for a new main lift station and an addition to the city’s high-rate treatment plant.
Kokosing submitted the low base bid of $54,422,49. Also submitting bids were Walsh Construction Co. II LLC at $57,600,000 and F.A. Wilhelm Construction at $60,777,000.
All of the bids were below CHA Consulting’s engineering estimate of $63,150,918.
“We will give notice to proceed and construction should begin this spring,” said City Engineer Chuck Ennis. The project has a projected 18-month construction schedule, Ennis said.
The project includes a 13,124-square-foot building for a new city sewer main lift station and an 889-square-foot addition to an existing high rate treatment plant at 2500 Prairieton Road.
The project is part of the city’s 20-year, $120 million combined sewer overflow, long-term control plan mandated by the federal government.
The board also selected HWC engineering for professional services for inspection on the project. A city engineering selection committee scored submissions from HWC, American Structure Point, DLZ and RQAW engineering firms. The board also renewed an agreement for H.J. Umbaugh & Associates for accounting services.
Prior to the board’s vote to award a contract, Joseph H. Selliken Jr., who through his Green Park Holdings LLC, a Terre Haute-based entity, owns property that once housed the former Wabash Environmental Technologies (WET) property at 1331 S. First St., suggested the board consider his land for an open pond for storage of combined sewer overflow.
Asked prior to the meeting if he wanted to sell his property to the city, Selliken said he would sell it for half of the savings he thinks a surface retention pond would save the city in its long-term control plan. He estimated savings would be $4 million to $16 million “and possibly $20 million.”
Additionally, when asked if the property would need an environmental cleanup, Selliken said the area that had contained storage tanks for WET would not be needed under his proposal. Former WET president, Derrick Hagerman, was sentenced in late 2007 to five years in a federal prison for falsifying documents related to the discharge of materials into the Wabash River.
The concept of a retention pond is something Selliken said he brought before city officials over nine years ago. Selliken told the sanitary board he plans to meet with Mayor Duke Bennett in early march as well as Michael Stenstrom, an engineer and professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA.
Selliken said he first went to the Terre Haute City Council, but was told he needed to go before the Board of Sanitary Commissioners.
“This doesn’t really have to do with what we awarded, which is for a new lift station as we need to replace the current station that is nearly 60 years old,” Ennis said after the meeting.
“We are not just storing water in a pipe, we are conveying it. The problem is in our entire system is when it rains, we don’t have enough pipe capacity to get all the water to the treatment plant,” the city engineer said.
“What Joe is suggesting is an open-air storage lagoon. …We tried that idea with the IP with concrete. We had all kinds of issues with open storage, so we have been down this road before,” Ennis said.
“I don’t see this as a viable option,” Ennis said.
Source: Tribstar.com
