Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The Sweet Home City Council last week rejected a request by Jacobs Engineering Group to increase by 3 percent the fee it charges the city to operate and maintain Sweet Home’s water and wastewater treatment plants.
“We have sent Jacobs a letter asking them to renegotiate the contract,” Springman said, as part of an evaluation the city conducted in March.
Jacobs had requested an increase from $1.06 million to $1.09 million. The city’s contract, which ends July 30, 2031, allows Jacobs to increase its fee up to 3 percent annually to cover increased costs.
The city entered into an agreement with Jacobs in October 2006 to operate, maintain and manage the treatment plants. The original contract was for 10 years. The council agreed to an early renewal for 16 years in September 2015.
During the council’s regular meeting June 25, Springman recommended rejecting the request.
The initial base annual payment was $658,000, he said, and it’s increased to $1.06 million, an increase of 61.36 percent, an annual average increase of 5.1 percent. The fee has declined once, by 1 percent in 2015 when the contract was renegotiated.
Already well aware of the deficiencies at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, which is scheduled for an expansion and upgrade, city staff completed an audit of the Water Treatment Plant in March “and found large deficiencies,” Springman said. He recommended not approving any increases until the deficiencies are addressed.
Jacobs has been working on some of the issues since then, Springman said.
Springman told The New Era he has been in Sweet Home for a year and a half. When he arrived, he approved Jacobs’ request for a 3-percent increase.
He said he has become more familiar with the arrangement since then.
“We’re not getting that money spent well, from my perspective,” Springman said. “There’s maintenance we’ve asked them to do that appears to be lacking.”
Also, for budget planning purposes, he said, “at 10 years old, we need to start looking at what needs to be repaired and replaced.”
Then the city can develop a capital plan, he said. That meant auditing the facility.
“When we got there, it was a little more dire than what we were anticipating,” Springman said, noting that the city is paying a lot for the contract, which keeps getting bigger.
Public Works compiled a six-page report on the conditions throughout the plant based on a March 1 walkthrough of the facility.
“Some of (the equipment), in all fairness, could be at the end of its life,” Springman said, but a lot of the normal maintenance was not being done. Also, communication, maybe, could be better.
“A lot of stuff, we should’ve been doing,” Regional Manager Brian Helliwell told The New Era this week. “We haven’t been doing a very good job.”
He wasn’t aware of the situation until about February, Helliwell said, adding that past managers should have been coming to him and the city with information about the equipment at the plant.
Things like broken door closers should have been replaced immediately, Helliwell said.
“None of this stuff should’ve gotten that far behind,” Helliwell said.
During the city’s walkthrough at the plant, city officials found one of two HVAC furnances did not work; and the admin office, locker room and conference room had no heat. Lighting was poor in the bay at the plant, with four failed lights.
Universal power supply batteries in the control room were failing due to their age, and the door had a broken hinge. Staff had no break room and no sink available for non-lab use.
A valve in the raw water building did not close all the way and needed to be replaced. Pipes and fittings had pitting and minor corrosion. Some had been spray painted with a rattle can but required professional sandblasting and epoxy paint.
Several pieces of equipment were obsolete, not working properly or broken, some of which affects the automation at the plant. Among broken equipment were two out of three finished polymer pumps. “Streaming current monitors” were not displaying properly, hindering automation to a degree.
While some portions of the system, such as filter media, have been inspected and tested, other parts remained in need of regular inspection, according to the report. The trains need to be cleaned every one to three years, but they have not been cleaned and inspected.
The plant’s recirculation system was offline. Settled materials had not been properly removed for years, and it probably has built up to many times the normal depth inside the train.
The hypochlorite system had failed, and water was being chlorinated from totes.
The clear well probably had not been inspected since startup in 2010, according to the report, and it needs to be inspected for corrosion and sediment buildup, especially since it is a load-bearing structure for pumps.
Control panels have communications issues with the SCADA system, a networked system used to control the plant. The SCADA system shows incorrect information about which valves are open or closed.
The audit showed some issues that had already been addressed, such as a new Comcast service allowing the SCADA system to run in real time and to be checked remotely. A number of items in the report also were checked off as “OK.”
The audit also showed other issues with the plant. For example, it can run just one effluent pump at a time. Running two would over-pressurize the water distribution system, throttling the plant down from a rate of 6 million gallons per day to 2 million gallons per day.
Jacobs has been working its way through the list since March, Helliwell said, and “about 90 percent of that list is complete.”
“I would say the biggest issue was witht he electronics,” Helliwell said, the issues with the control panel and the SCADA system, which requires a visit by a representative for Siemens, the manufacturer.
Later this year, when demand for water falls, Jacobs will drain and inspect the clear well, which is a large tank beneath the floor of the plant.
Jacobs had no specific schedule to inspect the clear well, Helliwell said. Typically, Jacobs will clean a clear well when it starts seeing issues with sludge or turbidity.
The city is responsible for replacing equipment that costs more than $3,000, Helliwell said, but he expects to foot the cost for the work on the control panel, which will cost more than $5,000.
“In that case, I just want Siemens to give us a clean bill of health,” Helliwell said.
Total, Jacobs is responsible for up to $30,000 per year under the contract, Helliwell said.
Springman and Helliwell both said they will have to discuss who is responsible for the cost of addressing the deficiencies.
Helliwell said that the Water Treatment Plant represents $360,000 of the contract, a price per gallon of one-tenth of a cent for water treatment.
The overall increase in the contract price since 2006 is primarily because costs have increased and the scope of the contract has grown, Helliwell said. The scope has grown with the opening of the new, larger plant in 2010. Regulations have changed as well, and the city started asking Jacobs to take bacteria samples in the distribution system.
Of the 3 percent requested by the company, Jacobs must spend about $21,000 more for chemicals at the Wastewater Treatment Plant because pH levels were too low, Helliwell said.
Jacobs “ate it this year.”
The remainder of the requested increase addresses increases in wages and benefits, Helliwell said.
Councilor Diane Gerson said she would like city staff to explore options, including financial information, and report back to the council.
The council voted 7-0 to reject the requested increase. Present were Cortney Nash, Susan Coleman, Lisa Gourley, Mayor Greg Mahler, Gerson, James Goble and Dave Trask.