Posted on September 23, 2024
KANKAKEE — Kankakee County is hopeful the dredging of the Kankakee River at the Aroma Park boat launch can still be completed this year.
Previously, two bids for the work were rejected in August because one was more than $400,000 over the engineer’s estimate, while the other bid was unclear if it could do the job for the amount that was bid. The county decided to re-bid the project at its Executive Committee meeting on Aug. 27.
Ben Wilson, the county’s transportation and development division manager, reported at Thursday’s County Board Highways & Waterways committee meeting that three contractors were in on a pre-bidding meeting on Tuesday.
“There was an opportunity for us to drill down specifically into what the changes were,” Wilson said. “The majority of the changes on our behalf are removing some of the uncertainty from a bidding standpoint, so the county will be leading the charge on the class 2 stormwater permit for the disposal site. We’ll use grant funds to do that, but it will allow us to not have to have the contractor pad that portion of the costs.”
Submitting bids on Aug. 12 were JF Brennan Company, of Ottawa, for $1,071,100, and JS McCullough Excavating and Silt Removal, of Coatesville, Ind., for $404,725.
Officials are hopeful the new bids will be closer to the $600,000 estimate by Christopher Burke Engineering, the Indianapolis firm that has been contracted to oversee the project. The county has approximately $850,000 remaining in the $1 million grant for the total dredging project.
There is going to be approximately 9,500 cubic yards of sand/sediment removed from the Kankakee River at the project site which is at Potawatomi Park in Aroma Park. Sand will be removed directly in front of the ramp and an approximate 30-foot width between the boat ramp and the island in the middle of the river.
The sand removed will be transported to the Illinois State Rifle Association Range in Bonfield, which has agreed to accept the sand. It will be used in the range’s berm. There were some questions if the area around the range could support the heavy trucks.
“There was a little bit of uncertainty of mobilization costs and some expenses in the grading and site prep that I think we cleaned up a little bit in this go around,” Wilson said.
The bids are due by 4 p.m. Oct. 7, and the Highways & Waterways committee will meet on Oct. 8 just before the County Board meeting to open the bids. If a bid is accepted, it can be awarded at the County Board meeting.
“We are going to stress to the contractor that we want this done this year,” Wilson said. “But we did want to with the contract documents to afford for weather within this year, so it might push into 2025 just so the committee’s aware of that.”
The dredging project will take 30-45 days to complete, so it’s hopeful the work could be completed before cold weather sets in late fall.
The entire project is being paid for by $1 million secured from the state by State Sen. Patrick Joyce, D-Essex. It’s estimated that approximately 9,500 cubic yards of sand/sediment will removed from the Kankakee River at the Aroma Park boat ramp.
The purpose is to remove enough sand in the area wide enough to allow boat traffic for emergency rescue operations and for recreational use.
