Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The city of Sweet Home is close to beginning construction of a new water treatment plant, Public Works Director Mike Adams told the City Council last week.
Ryan Quigley of Erwin Consulting Engineering of Lebanon unveiled nearly complete plans for the new treatment plant during the council’s regular meeting on March 24.
“We’re fairly close to putting this thing out for actual bid,” Adams said. “It will serve the city well, a facility we’ll be proud of having.”
The city was waiting last week on electrical designs for the final plan.
The plan is pretty well laid out now, Adams said. “We don’t have a lot of time and flexibility to move a lot of things.
“Our anticipated schedule at this point is still a little bit tentative. We’re looking to advertise the project around April 11.”
The city will open bids for the project on May 7 or May 8, Adams said, and he hopes to have a bid for council approval at its May 13 meeting, with a contract signed by the end of May.
Around June 7, the city will have a preconstruction meeting and finalize permitting to begin construction this summer.
The entire project will cost approximately $10 million, City Manager Craig Martin said.
The city already has installed a raw water supply line from Foster Dam to the site of the new water treatment plant 5,600 feet to the west, across Wiley Creek on former mill property located downhill to the northwest from the intersection of 47th Avenue, Osage Street and Nandina Street.
The land was provided by Santiam River Development in exchange for the unused and untreated raw water to which the city has water rights.
The city at times may use close to 2 million gallons of water per day during summer months.
The new facility will be capable of treating 6 million gallons of water per day in three completely separate systems inside the treatment plant, Quigley said. The clear wells will be placed under a structure rather than open to the air as the existing plant off Ninth Avenue does. The structure will have room for an additional 4 million gallons per day of production.
If one of the three systems producing water fails, it leaves two others still in operation and more than capable of meeting Sweet Home’s current needs, Quigley said.
The new plant meets the drinking water standards that increased about 10 years ago, throwing Sweet Home’s existing plant out of compliance.
The existing plant is not capable of meeting the contact time requirement between chlorine and water, although improvements were made by OMI, Inc., which now manages and operates the plant, by automating the water treatment plant and running it 24 hours per day at a slower rate, allowing more contact time.
Unable to meet the contact time standard enough of the time, the city is required to send notices to city residents every three months explaining that the water does not meet drinking water standards.
The new plant will use a hypo-chloride treatment system instead of chlorine and will meet the drinking water standard, officials say.