Emergency work last April to address high groundwater at Bay County Water Treatment Plant. (G2 Consulting Photo)

---

COST FLUCTUATING: County Revises Water Plant Bond Financing

High Ground Water, Undocumented Fill Required Emergency Work, Firm Reports

October 3, 2014
By: Dave Rogers

The cost of water is going up.

But of course we knew that. What is not known is the final price tag of the new Bay Area Water Treatment Plant, and that continues to fluctuate.

The Bay County Commission is slated to approve the financing package Tuesday at its 4 p.m. meeting. Some $57 million in loans and bonds has been approved so far. Project managers have until Dec. 12 to determine the ultimate size of the financing package, according to project manager Thomas Paige of the Bay County Department of Water and Sewer.

When the project is completed next July it will connect the new 17.4 million gallon a day membrane filtration water treatment plant through two miles of new 30-inch transmission mains to the Saginaw-Midland Municipal Water Supply System.

The, after more than four decades of trying, water customers in Bay City and surrounding townships will be served with cleaner water from the S-M Whitestone Point intake in Lake Huron near AuGres.

Out-city customers will pay an additional 50 cents per 100 cubic feet of water, estimated at $3.50 per month or about $10 per quarter, said Mr. Paige. City customers may see different increases based on their cost structures, he said.

The bond issue request up for vote Tuesday seeks authority to bond for another $15 million, up to $72 million total, for the new water processing plant at Euclid and Lauria Roads.

Part of the financing package is covered under low interest loans from the Michigan Drinking Water Revolving Fund.

The project cost previously had been pegged at $59.6 million.

However, Tom Paige, project director, says the final cost is still being fine tuned and could remain in the $60 million range. The resolution including bond documents prepared by the Detroit law firm of Dickinson-Wright may be revised even before Tuesday's meeting, he said.

Project managers can "draw" on the fund cache as needed and will not have to repay unused amounts, Mr. Paige said. "But we don't want to end up short so the total needs to cover any contingencies," he said.

The project has run into some extraordinary challenges, including encountering an unanticipated bed of peat beneath the surface of the ground at the water plant site.

Paige said that the overall site had to be raised 5 feet to elevate new buildings and tanks above the floodplain, costing an additional $100,000.

G2 Consulting Group of Troy and Ann Arbor was called in last April to deal with a high groundwater table that was hampering project progress. The firm reported: "G2 expedited the geotechnical investigation & design, addressing subsurface construction hurdles while avoiding expensive deep foundation systems - keeping the schedule on track."

"Who would believe that water would actually become an impediment to the success of project construction?" the firm's managers commented in their online report.

Approximately 3 - 4 feet of undocumented fill (soft peat) existed below building and tank locations. G2 recommended removal/replacement of undocumented fill with engineered fill to enable use of shallow foundations, instead of an expensive deep foundation system.

Groundwater was as shallow as 3 feet below existing grades. "G2 performed extensive analyses to design a dewatering system to lower the groundwater table and allow undercutting/ backfilling, trenching and deep excavations in dry conditions."

The useful life of the plant is estimated at 40 years.

Last September and October, 2013, the county approved separate bond issues of $12 million and $30 million for the plant, and in December another $15 million in bonds was issued -- totaling $57 million.

The new plant has been under construction for a year and is estimated to take another year before it goes on line, estimated at July 2015.

The 40,893-square-foot Bay Area Water Treatment Plant is scheduled for completion by July 2015. The new facility will provide water to nearly 38,000 customers from a state-of-the-art membrane water treatment plant. It boasts increased capacity, dual transmission lines and best in class technology.