Plattsmouth Focuses On Wastewater Plant Repair

PLATTSMOUTH - During a special Thursday meeting, Plattsmouth City Council approved engineering services and repair contracts regarding the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Missouri and Platte River flood waters damaged the plant March 14, forcing it to be closed. Until it can be fixed, the city must direct untreated sewage into to the plant and then into the river.

City Engineer Steve Perry recommended the council approve a $251,212 bid award to West-E-Con Inc. for restoring the secondary electrical service to the  plant. Only two bids were received with Omaha Electrical submitting a $313,850 bid for the project.

Perry: “The city received bids to replace secondary electrical services to the Wastewater Treatment Plant on Sept. 11 at our office. West-E-Con from Valley submitted the low bid. Wes-E-Con has successfully performed work for the city on previous electrical infrastructure projects and we feel comfortable with them doing the work.”

The work to be done includes replacing the secondary electrical service to all the building and treatment elements at the plant.

Currently the secondary electrical service is non-functional due to the damage caused by March flood waters. They have 25 working days to get it done.”

Other than a few safety codes that will need to be met, Perry said the project entails “replacing light with light.”

Before the electrical work begins, the digester and other areas of the plant will need more cleaning. In large treatment plants, aerobic digestion is used to break down organic waste.

Councilman Doug Derby asked if winter weather would slow down the cleaning work.

Perry: “Not really. Most of the work will be done inside except for cleaning the digester covers. We also must determine where to take the sludge. It will have to be hauled off.”

Discussion about getting the plant back online began in mid-July.

Perry: “We talked about seven or eight bid packages to work toward getting that plant back online. This is one of those packages. We authorized Fox Engineering on Aug. 6 to proceed with the preparation of the plans and specification for this rehabilitation scope of work phase.”

Originally, officials planned to bid the design work on the digester covers as a separate contract from the construction contract.

Perry: Once Fox Engineering had fully evaluated the plant’s design condition, they advised us that this work would be more efficient if it were part of the overall design and bid package for this phase of the work.”

Perry asked the council to approve amendment to the original Scope of Work for Task Order 11, which included 18 work items.

Perry: “We have prepared the attached Amendment No. 1, which reflects the engineering design services associated with two digester cover repairs along with additional process equipment items, additional mechanical and plumbing work, and the instrumentation and control design associated with the digester building repair, process and operations.”

Weather permitting, the earliest  the digester would be repaired be in March.

Perry: “If we could get started Nov. 1, it would be first of March before we could get that digester back online.’