City explores rehab of water plant

The City Council is considering other options for spending $13.5 million in revenue bonds earmarked for a new water treatment plant, including rehabilitating the 102-year-old existing plant.

The City’s engineers at Corlett Probst & Boyd [CPB] attended the Oct. 25 City Council meeting to discuss the proposal.

The firm and the City looked at a rehab in 2019 but would need a new inspection of the plant to determine the feasibility of such a plan, the engineers said.

The Council determined in 2022 that the cost of rehabilitating the old plant would be nearly the same or more than building a new one. The City’s engineers issued a request for proposals for a new plant last year but the lowest bid came in about $1.5 million over the City’s $13.5-millionbudget.

City Administrator Simon Dwyer said the rehab idea resurfaced in brainstorming sessions about how to restart construction on the plant.

“The number I am shooting for is 50 to 100 years. I would like professional engineers to tell us candidly if that is possible,” he said. “If we could get another 100 years out of the existing plant and do it for the money we have on hand at no further burden to the citizens of Olney, that may be something the Council may want to do.”

Mayor Rue Rogers said he was open to exploring “any and every option.”

“Whatever decision we make, we want it to be positive for the short term but also for the many generations it will serve,” he said.

One complication of a potential rehab is that “a lot of your units are more than 100 years old, concrete of that age … is very hard to rehab,” CPB engineer Jessica Parks said.

Public Works Director Michael Jacoba said the plant “still makes great water” and “there are just some structural things that need to be fixed.”

“This [plant] is getting to a point where things are about to start happening for the worst … and we need to do something pretty quick,” he said, adding that sections of the basin walls that have water leaking through them and “chunks of concrete” falling off parts of the plant.

The Council agreed to inspect the plant with an eye toward issuing a request for proposals to rehab it, along with the RFP to build a new plant that CPB plans to issue early next year.