Lincoln Park City Manager James Krizan
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
LINCOLN PARK – The City Council rejected all four bids for lead water pipe service line replacement at its Nov. 1 meeting, based on the high prices quoted, which exceeded the city’s budget.
Project manager John Hollandsworth of Hennessey Engineering said even the price of the lowest bidder exceeded $10,000 per service line replacement, which included lawn and concrete restoration. He recommended the project be rebid during the first quarter of the next calendar year.
City Manager James Krizan said the unit price reflected in the bids was actually twice what the city anticipated.
“We are seeing crazy inflation because everybody has put these projects out to bid,” he said. “As more companies start getting into the business of doing this, we should likely see some better pricing.”
Krizan said using American Rescue Plan Act money for the lead water line replacement has been discussed, but said they are anticipating that replacement could be included in an infrastructure package that might come through at the federal level.
“We are trying to squeeze the most projects out of the different funding sources that we can, because there’s not going to be the ability to use the infrastructure money for some of the ARPA projects we are planning,” he said.
Krizan said the city has 20 years to replace all of the lead service lines.
“Before coming to the mayor and council to discuss rejecting these, we did reach out to (Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy), and they were totally understanding of the fact that the prices were outrageous, and beyond what EGLE would be paying for through their grants,” he said. “So, to put it in perspective, skipping a single year truly only adds about 0.26 percent on to what we would need to do annually over the next 19 years.”
Krizan said they are considering doing the work internally using a dedicated crew of city employees, but they would have to do a cost analysis.
“There would be a lot of expertise we’d need, training, potentially some new equipment, and a significant up-front cost,” he said.
Krizan said some lead service lines have been replaced during road reconstruction and water main projects.
Hollandsworth said about 50 lead service lines get replaced annually when road work is done in an area. He said road project selection takes into account the need to replace water mains at the same time.
“We felt that trying to focus on trying to get as many lead service leads done at one time, during the road reconstruction, would be a good way to do it,” he said. “So, we try to focus on blocks that have the majority of the lead service leads.”
Hollandsworth said they were waiting to see whether the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy would give them a grant before it approached the mayor and council for approval, but the city did not qualify for an EGLE grant, so the city’s lead service line replacement was discussed further at a Deprtment of Public Service meeting.
Hollandsworth said the cost of lead service lines replacement which occurred during road reconstruction and water main replacement was locked into the contract for the entirety of the project in the past, which was to the city’s advantage.