ROBERTSDALE, Alabama — The Robertsdale City Council voted Monday, Oct. 19 to begin the process of a nearly $13.8 water and sewer system improvement project the city plans to complete in the next 3 1/2 years.
The council voted unanimously Monday to authorize engineers Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood to begin the application process for a USDA rural development loan.
GMC’s Denise King said the project would include two phases which would be completed simultaneously.
The first phase of the project would be collection system upgrades with an estimated cost of $3,143,375. The main focus of the project would be improvements to the city’s lift stations on College Street and Circle Avenue.
“The main purpose of this project would be to reduce overflows experienced when the city has a big rain event,” King said.
The second phase of the project would be upgrades to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, with an estimated cost of $7,591,000 bringing the total construction cost to $10,734,375.
Additional costs would include engineering design, construction period services, permitting and inspections, preliminary geotechnical investigation, construction staking, construction materials testing, preliminary engineering report/environmental assessment, legal and interest costs, along with a 10 percent contingency, bringing the total estimated cost of the project to $13,786,892.50.
In all the project would improve the average daily capacity of the system from 900,000 gallons per day to 1.5 million gallons per day, King said. The system should be able to handle three times its average daily flow, King said, which means while the system is now currently capable of handling 2.7 million gallons, the upgrades will allow it to handle up to 4.5 million gallons.
King said the engineering design on the project should take about 10 months in hopes of securing the loan sometime toward the end of next year. Mayor Charles Murphy said the project should be done over the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.
The city also plans to refinance its current Sewer Department debt service with the USDA in hopes of reducing the city’s current projected debt service payments over the next five years.
If the city can refinance its current debt at the same projected rate with the new debt, the projected payments over the next five years should be about the same as the city’s current projections, King said.
Officials estimate that the city could add up to 1,000 new homes requiring sewer service over the next 10 years.
In other business, the council took a pair of actions in the city’s ongoing recovery efforts from Hurricane Sally last month.
First the council approved a contract with East Bay Electric LLC for electric distribution repairs.
Murphy has estimated total damages to city facilities at around $6 million with most of the damage coming to the city’s electrical system. In September, following the storm, he estimated that repairs to the system could take three to four months.
According to the contract approved Oct. 19, East Bay Electrical would provide a five-man crew to assist the city’s crews for an estimated 400 hours at a cost of $600 per hour, or a total cost of $240,000.
The crew would include three electrical journeyman linemen, one electrical groundman, one electrical foreman, a half-ton pickup truck, a 50-foot (minimum) electrical bucket truck and an electrical digger truck (18-inch diameter auger minimum).
The council also voted to allow the city to negotiate a price for the removal of dangerous trees and limbs after the one bid received for the project did not meet the minimum project requirements.
Both projects would be submitted for FEMA reimbursement, said city engineer Greg Smith.
Also at the Oct. 19 meeting the council:
