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Costs for New City Water Plant Soar

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 09:00 CST

By Daniel Mcnamara, The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.

Mar. 22--Pulling out of the Black Creek Aquifer will be more costly than the city of Jacksonville originally anticipated.

A double in output and increases in construction prices have turned a $13.2 million estimate into $31.5 million, said Tim Baldwin of McKim & Creed, a Wilmington engineering firm.

Baldwin addressed the City Council during a water, sewer and solid waste workshop held prior to the council's regular meeting Tuesday night.

"I'm flabbergasted by the increase in cost," Mayor Pro Tem Jerry Bittner said.

The revelation prompted Bittner and other council members to invoke a partnership with the Onslow Water and Sewer Authority as a possible alternative to paying to build their own water plant.

"To me, the equation has changed," Bittner said.

Baldwin noted that ONWASA would face the same increases in construction costs.

The original designs by McKim & Creed called for a plant that would treat 2 million gallons per day and allow 1 million gallons per day to pass through, providing the city with 3 million gallons per day of service.

The new design calls for a plant that will treat 4 million gallons per day with an additional, nominal amount of already-clean water allowed to bypass treatment.

The price increase represents a double in price that corresponds to a double in treatment compounded by a 19.3 percent increase in construction costs.

Kevin Eberle, also of McKim & Creed, said the $31.5 million figure covered digging wells, piping water from the wells to the treatment facility and piping approximately 1 million gallons per day of discharge (Baldwin likened the discharge to a glass of well water in which 80 percent of the water had evaporated, leaving the minerals) to the New River.

The city is obligated by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources to reduce its 4 million gallon-per-day dependence on the Black Creek beginning in 2008. Instead, Jacksonville will begin tapping the Castle Hayne Aquifer, a shallower underground reservoir that requires more treatment before it is potable.

In other matters Tuesday, the City Council:

received a request from Lancaster-Craig & Associates, Raleigh-based firm that is representing the Georgetown Renaissance Community Association. Lancaster-Craig is requesting that the city and county put $75,000 into Georgetown master plan and strategic plan.

No action was taken on the measure.

unanimously approved two measures that will provide Wilson Bay with $280,000.

The first measure appropriated $125,000 from the general fund to the solid waste disposal fund for environmental testing, site assessment and documentation.

The second measure moved $155,000 from the capital projects fund -- money that the city had set aside for Sturgeon City and other projects -- to construct a building that Sturgeon City's UNC Wilmington partners plan to use for an aquaculture project.

A UNC W professor hopes to use the building as a nursery for fish that could later be introduced into the New River.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.

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Source: The Daily News

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