Othello solves contract issues with engineer

OTHELLO — The company overseeing the $1.7 million redrilling of Othello’s crooked No. 3 well is now working with a city contract.

The Othello City Council voted 7 to 1 at a regular Monday meeting to amend the contract with engineering firm Varela & Associates, which has been the city’s go-to consulting engineering firm.

The company was asking for an additional $125,000, as well as $97,000 for hydrogeological consulting firm Aspect Consulting, to complete and oversee engineering and archaeological work on the new well.

The council also unanimously approved the contract with Aspect.

“Varela & Associates gave me a better opportunity to understand, and they showed me what will be done and what will constitute an additional $120,000 worth of work,” said Council Member John Lallas, whose opposition at last week’s meeting torpedoed a pair of resolutions amending the Varela and Aspect contracts.

“I can’t dispute their claim, they say this needs to be done to benefit the city,” Lallas said. “Put it that way, it’s justifiable.”

“We are a city, and we need this protection,” Lallas said.

According to Jesse Cowger, the head of Varela & Associates, all of the additional costs reflect the documents that governments need to create and keep on public works projects, everything from certified reviews of payments and payroll to documenting that the contractor is only using American-made iron and steel — a legal requirement in Washington state.

In addition, the city had to hire an archaeologist to take core samples and ensure there aren’t any Native America artifacts along the 1,000-foot drill hole — a requirement of the U.S. Department of Agriculture loan the city is seeking to fund the drilling.

However, Lallas was also concerned that Othello doesn’t have a city engineer to oversee the project and that redrilling the well — which was declared an emergency last November when the pump failed — is taking so long.

“We approved funding for drilling in November,” Lallas asked. “Why did it not happen?”

“That was our concern, making it through the summer” echoed Council Member Eugene Bain.

Cowger said that drillers are very busy, and the driller the city contracted with — Schneider Water Service — was busy and has only just started mobilizing to work in Othello.

“Drillers are drilling a lot of wells right now,” Cowger said.

While the emergency declaration allowed the city to sign a no-bid contract, Cowger said it would likely not have saved any time to sign with the first drilling outfit willing to work, given that the city knows and trusts Schneider’s work and a poorly drilled well has caused all of these problems to begin with.

But a well that was needed for summer likely won’t be finished until October — nearly a year after the first well failed.

“We do not have the ability to do this ourselves,” Lallas said. “We don’t have an engineer, we’re going to have to spend $125,000 to do this.”

“We could fulfill these requirements if we had our own engineer,” he added.