Sewer plant bid comes in below estimate

    The Washington City Council received bids for its new sewer plant Wednesday and was glad to learn the lowest bid was 9 percent below the estimated cost of the project. The city received seven bids, the lowest of which was from Gridor Construction, which offered to construct the sewer plant for about $15 million. The city estimated the building would cost $16.5 million to construct. Gridor Construction is based in Buffalo, Minn.

    Steven Troyer of Fox Engineering, the consulting firm hired by the city, said he was pleased with the number of bids and their prices as well. Councilor Fred Stark asked Troyer if he knew anything about Gridor Construction?s background.

     ?Are they reliable?? asked Stark. ?Is there any kind of rating system on which you can judge their work??

    ?We will do some more inquiries of Gridor Construction,? said Troyer. ?We?ve worked with them before on at least two projects that come to mind. They work in the wastewater industry, so they?re familiar with this type of project. We?ll do more investigation on them in the next week, but I have no reason to think they?re incapable of performing the work.?

    Councilor Bob Shepherd said he was pleased to learn Fox Engineering has worked with Gridor before.

    ?That allays a lot of the questions I had,? said Shepherd.

    Troyer said his firm would study the bids and then recommend one of them to the council.

    ?At this time, I don?t see why it wouldn?t be to award the contract to the low bidder,? said Troyer.

    Troyer said the council could award the contract at its next regular meeting on April 6 or it could even do it before then if it wanted to move the project along.

    The council approved a farm management agreement with Washington State Bank. Washington State Bank will manage 70 to 80 acres of the 126 acres west of Elm Grove Cemetery that the city purchased from Bernard and Judith Bartholow last year. The city needs part of that ground to build the new sewer plant, but wants to grow crops on the rest of the property.

    City Administrator Dave Plyman remarked, ?If we don?t do anything, we?re going to have a field of weeds. We have to grow something. Planting soybeans is putting that property to a productive use.?

    Plyman said a farm management agreement is better than a traditional cash lease because under a cash lease, the city would be responsible for damages.

    ?We?re going to have a lot of people out there working,? he said. ?One pickup truck going where it shouldn?t go could cause damage, and then we?re spending a lot of staff time addressing the damages. The farm management agreement avoids all that.?

For more, see our March 17 print edition.