Warden approves $570K for sewer upgrades

WARDEN — The Warden City Council voted unanimously during the Feb. 13 regular meeting to award a bid of about $570,000 to DW Excavating for upgrades to Warden’s lift station No. 1, as well as approve the construction administration contract with Gray and Osborne engineers.

Gray and Osborne Civil Engineer Zara Guzmán said about $522,000 of the project costs are funded through the Department of Ecology’s Water Quality Combined Funding Program.

Warden City Administrator Kriss Shuler said the station, which raises wastewater to a higher elevation so it can flow with gravity toward its final destination, does not provide enough telemetry data for the city. 

“It was put in in about 1980 and so it has not had any upgrades at all,” she said. 

According to the DOE’s website, the improvements also aim to help prevent wastewater spills or backups.

Guzmán introduced the bid to the council.

“I'm one of the engineers who worked on the lift station 1 improvements project,” she said. “Just a quick summary; this project includes new pumps, a new chunk of force main (pipe), some electrical upgrades, HVAC equipment to cool the electrical equipment, protect it as needed in the winter and in the summer, and a new small little water service for a yard hydrant for any washing or anything that city needs to do on-site. So it's an upgrade in general.”

Guzmán broke down the bids the city received for the project.

“As you'll see in the review of this packet, the city received eight bids, which is great; we got a lot of interest. The lowest bid came from DW excavating and they're out of Davenport, Washington. Their bid was a little bit over the funding amount …The funding amount was, I believe, $522,000, so their bid is about $50,000 over.”

Gray and Osborne are working on finding more funding, Guzmán said. 

“I'm currently working with the city, with Kriss, and Ecology for additional funding to cover the additional costs for the construction,” she said. “We have that conversation going with Ecology, so they're aware of it, and we'll just keep moving on with that process for additional funding.”

Guzmán gave Gray and Osborne’s recommendation regarding the bids.

“We're recommending you award (the bid) to DW Excavation. We’ve worked with them on a fair amount of previous projects; they're really good to work with. They do utilities, lift stations and all kinds of work and we think of them as a great contractor,” Guzmán said. “This would allow us to continue moving forward with getting the contract signed, going through the insurance, as well as, in parallel, working with the funding agency, getting additional funds so that kind of just gets the process of moving forward because I know this is a critical project for the city.”

Schuler said the project cost estimate was less when the city first applied for the funding several years ago.

Gray and Osborne Civil Engineer Jamin Ankney said the final bid could have ended up higher.

“If you see the engineer's estimate, we thought it was going to be another $50,000 higher than that,” he said. “So we were kind of pleasantly surprised that it was what it was.

The council then unanimously approved both awarding the bid to DW Excavating and the construction administration contract with Gray and Osborne, which Ankney said covers some additional design features not in the original contract. 

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.

    Council members, from left to right, Byron Starkey, Omar Pruneda, Emily Campos, Brittney Pittman and Jesus Martinez listen to representatives of city engineering firm Gray and Osborne during the regular Feb. 13 meeting.