Posted on April 19, 2018
By John Kline, Goshen News
Goshen Dam Pond Dredging Advisory Board members met Monday at City Hall to discuss plans to revamp the recently stalled Goshen Dam Pond dredging project.
Monday’s meeting served as the first time the group had gathered since last month’s announcement that the $1.1 million dredging contract the city had approved with Michigan-based dredging company Grow America last October had fallen through, requiring that the project be rebid.
“We are fully aware of the difficulties this project has had in getting going and getting everything done. That was not by design in any way, shape or form,” Goshen Mayor Jeremy Stutsman said of the project Monday. “It’s been a tough couple of years for the city of Goshen with the amount of engineering projects that are going on. So today I understand there are some frustrations coming out about how long it has taken, but we also recognize that, and I think it’s going to be more beneficial if we move forward and find out what the next steps are.”
The idea for the dam pond dredging project was first brought to the public back in early 2013 by members of the Elkhart River Restoration Association, a local nonprofit founded in 1983 with the goal of studying the needs of the Elkhart River and its watershed.
According to the ERRA, the 140-acre pond behind the Goshen dam has become filled with sediment over the course of its more than 150-year existence. The silting has resulted in a reduction in the pond’s depth, the group says, and has also created significant aquatic vegetation growth. The shallow water also limits the recreational use of the pond and has resulted in degradation of fish and wildlife habitat, according to the group.
Faced with such a predicament, the city, Elkhart County and pond property owners formed a partnership several years ago aimed at securing enough funding to implement a large-scale dredging project for the pond.
Serving as the guiding hand of the project is the Goshen Dam Pond Dredging Advisory Board, which includes David Troup, a dam pond property owner and president of the ERRA, Adam Scharf, a Goshen city councilman appointed by the city, and Chris Martin, a dam pond property owner appointed by the county.
A major component of Monday’s meeting involved an update from the consulting firm Abonmarche on the plan to kick-start the currently stalled project. Abonmarche was granted a contract not to exceed $15,500 by the city in March to update the project’s specifications and permits.
According to Brad Mosness, a civil engineer with Abonmarche, the first part of the revamp involves having a bathymetric survey conducted on the pond to get an updated look at the current depth of the pond and the amount of silt that has accumulated.
“So either the end of this week or next week you’ll see some surveying being done out on the pond,” Mosness said, noting total time for the survey shouldn’t exceed more that two days. “We’re going to be out there over the next few days and set some control points for them so they can reference those. We’ll probably have results to share in probably a couple weeks.”
Next on the agenda will be going through all of the bid documents previously used for the project and reviewing all of the existing permits to determine which are still good, and which, if any, may need to be renewed, Mosness explained.
Following that review, a request for bid proposals will be created and the project will be advertised, Mosness said, though not before board members have had a chance to review the RFP to finalize goals for the project.
“I think that would be the intent, to have the advisory board look at the bid before it goes out, and also, when we get those bids in, the advisory board will get together and give their opinions on the bids as well,” Mayor Stutsman said of the plan.
According to Dustin Sailor, director of public works for the city, the current plan includes having a revised set of plan documents sent to the board during the week of May 7. The board will then reconvene May 14 at 4 p.m. in the City Annex Building conference room to review the plan and have any questions or concerns addressed.
Once that meeting has taken place, the project will be advertised for bid, first on May 25, and next on June 1. All bids will then be due back to the city by June 11, when the submitted bids will be opened and read by the Goshen Board of Public Works and Safety.
Following that 2 p.m. board of works meeting, the dredging advisory board will meet a final time at 3 p.m. June 11, again in the City Annex Building, to review the submitted bids and decide on a path forward, Sailor explained.
Should a bid package be agreed upon by the board at that meeting, Sailor said a project contract could be awarded as early as the next board of works meeting, likely on June 18.
THE PLAN
Initially, advisory board members hoped to have approximately 34 acres of the pond dredged to an average depth of 6 feet. The plan involved dividing the pond into six sections that would be dredged according to priority and as funding allowed. The dredged silt would then be transported to farmland along Kercher Road where it would be spread out to dry.
City officials put the project out for bid in early 2015, and Grow America was selected as the contractor of choice with a low bid of $2.6 million.
Phase I of the project, which included development of the overall dredging plan, all necessary permitting, and design of the confined sediment placement site, access road, and staging area, was approved by the Board of Works in January 2016 at a cost of $143,500. At the time, it was anticipated that a contract for Phase II of the project, which includes the actual dredging work, would be finalized with Grow America later that year once all permitting had been completed and additional project funding secured. However, fundraising issues would eventually force the group to take a step back and reevaluate the overall scope and design of the proposed dredging.
Not counting the funding already spent on Phase I of the project, the group had secured just over $1 million for the actual dredging of the pond prior to last month’s announcement that Grow America had pulled out of the deal.
Source: Goshen News
