The Homer City Council approved a resolution last Monday, awarding a contract to an Anchorage firm for the development of the city’s 2025 Water and Wastewater Master Plan.
Bristol Engineering Services Company, LLC, the firm to whom the contract was awarded, previously prepared a Water and Sewer Master Plan for the City of Homer in 2006. According to a Nov. 4 memorandum to the council from Public Works Director Daniel Kort, that plan covered a 20-year period through 2025. In the city’s request for proposals for the project, conducted in September, Bristol’s proposal scored the highest according to criteria established in the RFP documents. The company also submitted the lowest bid, with their proposal price set at $149,987.
The new plan’s development will be funded through two loans, totalling $150,000, received by the city from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s State Revolving Fund Program. The city previously submitted one application for the water portion of the master plan, and the other for the wastewater portion. Although the final master plan as a deliverable will be one document, Bristol is expected to bill the city separately for the water and wastewater components.
The city is not currently expected to fund the project out of pocket. Kort noted in the memo that while the State Revolving Fund “doesn’t technically issue grants,” they can issue loans and forgive a portion of the loan, which they call “principal forgiveness.” He wrote that the two loans have $150,000 in principal forgiveness attached, “which is the full value of the loans.”
In the scope of services described in the memo, Kort wrote that the project “consists of furnishing all labor, materials, equipment, tools, supervision, and other facilities necessary to prepare a master plan.” Bristol is expected to create a computer model of Homer’s existing water and wastewater systems; identify how service can be “most effectively” extended into areas currently not served; determine what improvements will be needed for the existing system to support expansion; define the cost and suggest a schedule for necessary future capital improvements; and incorporate water and sewer data into the city’s Geographic Information System, or GIS.
As part of the project, the city’s water treatment plant, fire flow transmission, distribution and storage capacities, as well as the wastewater treatment plant, piped collection system and pump station capacities, will all be evaluated.
The computer models prepared as part of the 2025 plan, Kort wrote, will “allow the city to understand (before development occurs) what impact it will have on the existing wastewater and water system.”
The council passed Resolution 25-104 unanimously during their last regular meeting on Nov. 24.
Find the resolution and supplemental materials in full at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-regular-meeting-336.
