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$300,000 plan to save $10 million?

Hickory City Council says yes

John M. Setzler Jr.

Senior Utilities Plant Operator Praful Shah measures sludge levels in the settling tanks at the Hickory Waste Water Treatment Plant on Cloninger Mill Road on Tuesday.

DETAILS

According to Hickory’s Web site, the Northeast Wastewater Treatment Facility upgrade will, “Replace existing conventional activated sludge process with a biological nutrient removal process. The new process train will consist of mechanical screens, a new influent pump station, a vortex grit chamber, an equalization basin, an anaerobic basin, an anoxic basin, oxidation ditches with surface aerators, secondary clarification, chlorination / dechlorination utilizing an onsite hypochlorite generation system, post aeration and sludge digestion. Sludge will be thickened using rotary drum thickeners and sent to the regional composting facility. The plant will also have a new laboratory and control building.”

By Richard Gould | Hickory Daily Record

Published: August 5, 2009

HICKORY - The Hickory City Council has decided to spend $300,000 in an effort to save $10 million.

The $300,000 will be spent to alter existing plans for the city's Northeast Wastewater Treatment Facility upgrade at 310 Cloninger Mill Road. The expenditure was approved at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

The original plan called for the construction of new structures atop existing ones. The plan cost about $1.29 million to produce and about two-and-a-half years engineering work to put together, said Kevin Greer, Hickory's Assistant Public Services director.

The goal was to expand the plant's treatment capacity for waste treatment and ability to remove nutrients from the water — for $30 million or less.

"Thirty million dollars has been our projected cap all along," Greer said. "It's a project that's indispensable."

Several bids for the original plan were submitted to the city April 20. The low bid for the job came in at nearly $7.5 million more than the city's $30 million limit. On June 16, Hickory City Council voted to reject all bids.

"When it came in at 7-and-a-half-million dollars over our maximum budget, of course it was disheartening," Greer said. "The last thing we want to do is go out there and spend 7-and-a-half-million dollars if we don't have to."

Council voted to hire AECOM Inc. to modify the design. The goal is to reduce the project's cost from $37 million to $27 million, resulting in a $30 million estimated completion total when contingency costs are included.

The city's goal is to save $10 million by spending $300,000.

The new plan will allow the upgraded facility to occupy the same 15 acres it occupies now, Greer said.

It will not call for building facilities atop existing ones and will seek to renew and resurface as many of the existing tanks and plant infrastructure as possible in an effort to save money.

"We've got to do it to get the project cost down to something that's buildable," Greer said.

Greer said he expects the design modification to take about 30 engineers two to three months to complete and will take about 3,700 man-hours. (A person working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks would work 2,080 hours.)

The facility upgrade will allow the city to rebuild its 21-year-old pump station. Greer said the pump station is outdated and cannot handle the additional load during heavy rains.

He said city engineers must craft replacement parts for the pump station when parts fail because new ones are no longer being manufactured.

Greer said updating the wastewater treatment facility is vital to avoid wastewater contamination into Lake Hickory. The upgraded facility will be equipped to remove ammonia, nitrogen and phosphorus from the newly treated water before it enters the lake.

Greer said his goal is to have the new plan completed by mid-October.

The city plans to fund the project with a $17 million loan from the Clean Water State Revolving Funds, to be repaid in 20 years at 2.5 percent interest, and fund the remaining portion through the sale of bonds.

"In a perfect world this project would be approved in December and under way in February," Greer said.

In other business the council voted to:

• Adopt a joint resolution with Conover to levy an additional 1 percent Room Occupancy and Tourism Development Tax.

• Re-appropriate $32,000 of General Fund Balance to Hickory Fire Department's Maintenance and Repair of Buildings fund to complete renovations to Station 2 to enable the activation of a second ladder company.

• Appropriate $84,000 of Water and Sewer fund balance and budget for the purchase of two sludge trailers for the wastewater treatment plants to replace two trailers that were deemed to be unworthy of road travel.