Williamsburg water plant expansion bids $2 million over budget

The City of Williamsburg has $5 million in funding to spend on its proposed expansion and renovation of the city’s water treatment system.
Unfortunately, bids opened up on Oct. 5 place the cost for the system at $7 million, or $2 million more than the city can afford.
This was the news that Quest Engineers Inc., which designed the expansion, delivered to the Williamsburg City Council during its monthly meeting Monday evening.
The city council unanimously voted to reject the bids at the recommendation of Quest, and plans to hold a work session in the near future to discuss revising the plan to fit within the current funding.
“The city definitely needs to reprioritize what needs to be done,” noted John LaRue, a senior project manager for Quest.
LaRue said that the expansion basically includes three major components, including an expansion and upgrade of the existing plant from a two million gallons a day to three million gallons per day.
The project also calls moving the raw water intake about five miles upstream above the discharge for the sewer plant, and for building a new raw waterline to the plant.
The city received funding for the project three to four years ago.
LaRue said there were two primary reasons for the delay in building the project.
The first dealt with the scope of the project.
Initially, a $9 million expansion was planned that included improvements to the distribution center.
A rate increase would have been required to do that expansion, and area water districts, which purchase water from Williamsburg, balked at the increase. Plans for that expansion have since been dropped.
The other delay dealt with getting state approval for the new raw water intake system.
LaRue noted state requirements for new intakes are much more stringent now than they were four years ago.
” Basically everything that could go wrong did,” Mayor Roddy Harrison said about delays for the project.
Harrison said he was glad to see that the council wanted to schedule a workshop to discuss the situation.
Harrison said he plans to have water plant manager Steve Reeves present for the work session because he will have a better idea of what is needed most than the council would.
Councilman Paul Estes suggested contacting local water districts, which buy water from Williamsburg, about attending the work session.
Estes noted that the city may want to consider a rate increase to help cover the increased cost of the plant.
Harrison said for him moving the raw water intake away from the waste water system is the major thing for him.
LaRue noted that a new raw water intake will have to be built in order to expand the plant to a three million gallon a day capacity.
During its monthly meeting Monday, the council also discussed trying to get city council meetings broadcast again on the University of the Cumberlands public access channel on the local cable television system.
Several years ago, the school taped city council and city school board meetings for broadcast.
The professor, who taped the meetings left, and the school soon quit taping the meetings.
Councilwoman Laurel West suggested contacting the university about again taping and broadcasting the meetings.
“I would welcome that,” Harrison added.