This week town officials seemed poised at last to transmute plans for a $2 million town center sewer system from designs on paper to the network of pumps, pipes, tanks, and high- and low-tech components that will comprise the new wastewater collection system and treatment plant. The design for the system is approved. The engineering schematics and specifications are done. Dates for the release of bid documents and the award of a construction contract have been penciled onto Town Hall calendars. But even at this late date, several steps remain before shovels, hydraulic or otherwise, can go “in the ground” and construction can begin.
“I remain hopeful [the system] will be substantially complete this year,” Town Center Sewer Building Committee (TCSBC) Chairman Chris Ashley told the Press Tuesday.
The most likely start date, Ashley and others close to the project say, is late August or early September. If all goes according to plan, the town will begin to solicit bids on June 29 with an announcement on Comm-PASS, the state’s project registry, at which time bid documents will be made available to interested contractors. That date was set last week by the town’s de facto procurement committee, which consists of Ashley; Wayne Perry, the Norfolk Ram engineering manager who has coordinated preparations for project since 2009; Town Administrator Tim Bragan; and Finance Director Lorraine Leonard, who is also the town’s procurement officer. Bidders will be invited to a site meeting in Harvard on July 15, and bids will be due to Town Hall no later than July 28, giving contractors roughly five weeks to respond, as required by state law.
Perry told the Press in a phone interview last week that the group hoped to make a recommendation to the Board of Selectmen at its first meeting in August. The contractor will be given 240 days to complete the job, but whether it starts in August or September, Perry acknowledged, the work will inevitably overlap with the start of the 2011-2012 school year and extend into the fall and winter.
A major milestone
The release of bid documents will be major milestones for the town. Voters approved the new system at Town Meeting in May 2009. They passed a new bylaw to create a sewer district and a sewer commission to manage it, and they approved the borrowing of money to build it.
The journey from Town Meeting approval to construction has taken more than two years, during which the state legislature had to approve the new bylaw; the town had to win access to a low-interest state revolving fund (SRF); and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had to sign off on a design for the new system. That final approval was granted on May 26, after months of wrangling between the town and DEP engineers that led to significant modifications of the original plan.
Once completed, an estimated 79 residences, municipal buildings, churches, and businesses in the center of town will gain access to a low-pressure sewer, which will connect to the treatment plant on Massachusetts Avenue that already handles wastewater from Bromfield School, the public library, and the elementary school. The plant, which has been in violation of its discharge permit several times over the past decade, will receive a significant upgrade, one which will remedy past failures and guarantee it can handle the increased flow of wastewater from its new users.
But before construction can begin, papers must be signed to obtain the SRF loan with which the town will fund the project. And before those papers can be signed—a step Ashley likens to the closing for a mortgage—the town must come up with a number of documents, including proof the town is authorized to borrow the money, an estimate of the fees the town will charge users, and a draft of the policies that town sewer commissioners will use to manage the system. Ashley says that he, Perry and selectman Tim Clark, who is the Board of Selectmen (BOS) liaison to the TCSBC, have yet to meet the SRF administrators to confirm the list of the papers needed for the signing. He expects to schedule such a meeting within a week. Clark is drafting a final sewer policy document to present to the BOS for approval at its next meeting on June 21.
The $2 million circuit breaker
Before the loan can be secured, however, one more question must be answered: what will be the final cost of the system? When voters at Town Meeting approved the system in 2009, they did so with a promise by the selectmen that should the cost of the project exceed $2 million—a so-called “circuit breaker”—the BOS would call a Special Town Meeting to ask for the town’s approval to exceed the original amount. Whether that circuit breaker will pop won’t be known until bids have been received and a contractor chosen in early August. Perry told the Press that if the lowest qualified bid is greater than $2 million, the selectmen could call for a Special Town Meeting (STM) at their first August meeting and schedule it to convene Aug. 22. If STM approved the new budget, a town vote on a higher loan amount could be held the next day, Aug. 23. The contract to begin construction would be awarded at the next selectmen’s meeting.
What are the odds the winning bid will be greater than $2 million? “If I had to bet,” Ashley told the Press this week, “I think we’re going to have to have Town Meeting.” First, there’s more ledge than planners thought would be the case before sample borings were done last summer, said Ashley. The existence of ledge will raise the cost of laying pipe. Second, at the request of the elementary school, the main pump for the system will be moved from its current location to the opposite side of the school building and provided with a larger holding tank. Finally, Ashley said, significant changes were made to the treatment plant at the request of DEP, which could raise its price. Still, Ashley says he has his fingers crossed. Costs of construction are still lower than they were four years ago. “We’ve seen engineering documents with estimated costs that are higher than bids that actually came in.”
There has been no lack of sewer metaphors and jokes in the Press and among the volunteers and consultants who have planned the new system. This week the last word goes to Ashley, who in an e-mail to the Press commenting on the many delays his committee has encountered, said that the remaining process “should flush out any heretofore unrecognized deadlines.”
