The Philomath City Council approved a $1.6 million water and sewer project scheduled for this winter on 19th Street during its meeting Tuesday night at City Hall.
Kevin Fear, Public Works director, said Benton County plans to resurface both north and south segments of North 19th next summer. He estimated that the project would begin in early December and be completed sometime in February or March.
“So, we have to do an offseason sewer-water replacement to get out ahead of them,” Fear said.
Mid-Valley Gravel won the bid and was lowest over seven other companies that had submitted cost estimates. Fear said the project cost actually came in lower than anticipated.
“It’s surprising with the costs going into the wintertime doing deep sewers and that sort of stuff is usually a lot more work for a contractor,” Fear said. “So the pricing was surprising and more than fair.”
Westech Engineering Project Manager Raymond C. Engel pointed out that Mid-Valley Gravel’s bid was approximately 14% below the engineer’s estimate, which had been calculated at $1.85 million.
The exact bid was $1,598,232.65 plus a $240,000 contingency budget to address unknown conditions or issues that may come up during construction.
Residents along the project area will see some impacts to water service.
“We try very hard to limit outages to four hours,” Fear said, explaining the level of preparation required of the contractor to limit down time and adding that when water service resumes, there will be a routine boil water notice for 24 hours. “But they should only be out of water for four hours maybe.”
Mid-Valley Gravel and the city of Philomath have a well-established working relationship. The company most recently finished work on the South 16th Street extension project that connected that route to South 17th and Cedar.
The project was approved on a 5-0 vote (Chas Jones absent, one seat vacant).
