Bid for repairs of water reservoir blamed for boil water advisories tops $925,000

Mount Vernon needs to spend more than $925,000 to repair an underground water reservoir that was responsible for two citywide boil water advisories.

The apparent low bid of $926,474 by Dirt Dawg Excavating will be examined to determine if the bidder can meet all requirements and that its bond checks out. A second bid was approximately $40,000 higher.

Some water customers rely on that reservoir for their water pressure, so it must be fixed, Mayor Matt Starr said. Work hasn’t been performed on it since the early 1950s.

Wastewater

Digester No. 2 at the wastewater treatment plant was cleaned out. This emergency work is in addition to the $5 million in work necessary to meet federal mandates that form the basis of the wastewater rate hike proposal.

The work has cost more than $77,000 so far, but Starr said more charges are expected. A mobilization charge to get a crew to the plant was $6,600. Cleaning the digester cost $50,661. Hauling the sludge out to the landfill, a number calculated based on its tonnage, cost $18,880.

The City thought the digester hadn’t been cleaned in 20 years.

“But when we did some more digging, we couldn’t find where it had ever been cleaned,” Starr said.

On Monday, the emptied digester was undergoing an assessment to determine repair and replacement needs.

Utility billing

The city had another delay in getting invoices out to water customers this month. Starr said the post office requires barcodes to rush them out to city addresses. But the utility billing office software now used can’t print barcodes, so City Council will be asked to approve software that meets this requirement.

Public Works

A bid packet to invite bids for the Kokosing River Restoration Project will be ready soon. In April, City Council approved contracts for engineering and design services for the project. Three areas of the city suffered damages by flooding from the river: near Phillips Street, where the flow of the river undermined the bank near the road; at a breach in the west lake of Ariel-Foundation Park where the river and the lake connect; and a washout area where utilities pass through.

City stormwater utility funds helped Mount Vernon secure grants from the Muskingum Watershed Conservation District and the EPA.

Street Department

Crews worked on clearing city streets on Jan. 16, 17, 19 and 20. Crews started working at 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 16 to salt streets. Five days later, they had used 168 tons of salt and worked 45.5 hours of overtime.