Authority opens bids for sewage plant
BROWNSVILLE – Bids were opened Wednesday for the long-awaited construction of a new sewage treatment plant for the Brownsville Municipal Authority. The authority has been under a state Department of Environmental Resources consent decree for the past several years, requiring it to either flood-proof the current plant or construct a new plant. The current plant has a capacity to treat a million gallons of sewage a day, which the DEP has said is insufficient to handle heavy flows that occur during rainstorms. The authority opted to build a new plant to replace the current system that is more than 30 years old.
Bids were opened Wednesday for five separate contracts for the construction: the general contract for the construction of the treatment facility, the electrical contract for the facility, the general contract for renovations to pump station A and the electrical contract for modifications to Pump Station B, and installation of a force main along Shady Avenue.
The multi-million dollar project attracted attention from as far away as Canada from contractors seeking bid specifications, but those actually submitting bids tended to be from southwestern Pennsylvania.
Four bids were submitted for the plant construction, ranging from $4.8 million to $5.2 million, with Port Vue Plumbing Inc., of McKeesport submitting the apparent low bid. The plant electrical contract drew bids from six contractors ranging from $382,700 to $667,000. W.R. Casteel of Hopwood was the apparent low bidder for that contract, as well as for the Pump Station B electrical work. There were 11 bidders on the Pump Station B work, ranging from Casteel’s $136,900 to a high of $202,525.
The general work on Pump Station A drew five bids, ranging from $531,558 to $853,000. The installation of the new force main attracted two bids: $204,805 from W.G. Tomko, Inc., of Finleyville, and $275,000 from D & M Contracting of New Alexandria.
“I’m tickled we had decent participation. I wish we had had more participation for contract 5 (the force main),” said Glenn Wolfe, an engineer with Fayette Engineering, the authority’s engineering firm.
Wolfe will now review all of the bid documents before making a recommendation on the contracts to be awarded. The authority will most likely approve the contracts at its regular January meeting and work is expected to begin before spring, Wolfe said.
If all the lowest bids are accepted, the construction costs for the project would total $6.1 million. That price does not include the engineering and design fees. The municipal authority has received preliminary approval from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority (PENNVEST) for a low-interest loan of up to $7.5 million.