As he headed home from a wastewater meeting Tuesday morning,
Councilman Bob Dillon was taken aback by something that crossed his
mind.
”
I came home, and thought, ‘Wow, I saved $3 million today,’
”
said Bob Dillon, Gilroy City Councilman and South County
Regional WasteWater Authority chairman.
As he headed home from a wastewater meeting Tuesday morning, Councilman Bob Dillon was taken aback by something that crossed his mind.
“I came home, and thought, ‘Wow, I saved $3 million today,'” said Bob Dillon, Gilroy City Councilman and South County Regional WasteWater Authority chairman.
As a result of Tuesday’s SCRWA meeting, Gilroy and Morgan Hill are expected to save $3.3 million on a pipeline and pumping station for the wastewater treatment plant they share after the South County Regional WasteWater Authority approved two project bids while negotiating cost-saving contract concessions with the plant management company.
The SCRWA board approved a $2.23 million bid from San Luis Obispo-based Specialty Construction for a 20-inch pipeline that will be able to dump treated wastewater into the Pajaro River during emergency situations. The engineer’s estimate for that project was $4.3 million.
The pipeline will have irrigation turnouts for recycled water that can be used by farmers, according to Saeid Vaziry, senior managing engineer at the treatment plant. Treated wastewater at the plant actually is of a higher quality than water that already is in the river, Vaziry said. It is now used to irrigate Christmas Hill Park, Gilroy’s sports park and the Gilroy and Eagle Ridge golf courses as well and is used for irrigating farms.
In addition, an influent pumping station, which will control the flow of wastewater into the SCRWA facility on Southside Drive, will replace another facility that is likely 30 to 40 years old, Vaziry said.
The local wastewater authority accepted a $5.7 million bid from Richmond-based Overaa and Co. for the project, which engineers estimated would cost $6.9 million. Overaa also built the wastewater treatment plant in Hollister.
The city of Gilroy pays 58.1 percent of the cost of all SCRWA expenses, so its share of the cost of both projects would total about $4.6 million.
“It’s really awesome news and a really good deal for this community,” Vaziry said of the bids.
Also during Tuesday’s meeting, SCRWA negotiated a new contract agreement with CH2M Hill, the company that manages the wastewater treatment plant for Gilroy and Morgan Hill.
CH2M Hill agreed this year to forego a 3 percent increase in fees it annually receives from SCRWA to run the plant.
The company signed a 15-year contract with SCRWA in 2006 that limited the annual fee hike to 3 percent because those costs had fluctuated greatly in the past.
The contract will remain in effect for the next 11 years. Because each year’s fee is based upon the previous year’s, SCRWA expects to save about $264,000 over the life of the contract and $20,630 this year alone, according to figures that Vaziry provided.
The new contract agreement comes after the city reached a three-year agreement with Gilroy firefighters last month that is expected to cut the city’s fire services costs by $380,870 during the next fiscal year and $365,500 in subsequent years of the agreement.
The city also has recently experienced success with capital projects, when the library project came $6.5 million under budget.
Dillon attributed the cost savings in these circumstances to the difficult economic times.
“This is kind of the silver lining for the terrible cloud we’re dealing with right now,” he said.
