The cost to begin repairs on Vicksburg’s sewer system is expected to run over $1 million, city officials learned Tuesday.
City public works director Garnet Van Norman said two companies, Suncoast Infrastructure of Florence, which has done the first phase of assessing and mapping one-tenth of the city’s 109-year-old sewer system, and Gulf Coast Underground of Mobile, Ala., were the only bidders on the project. Suncoast, he said, was the low bidder with $1.445 million. Gulf Coast’s bid was $1.56 million.
The board took the bids under advisement.
Van Norman said the bids do not include the full repair of problems found during the first assessment.
“What we did, we just tried to get a contract going,” he said, adding the bids cover repairs for about 4 percent of the problems. “It’s just to get started doing the repair work.”
The initial work, he said, will be done on the street targeted for overlay in the second phase of street paving under the city’s $9.2 million capital improvements bond issue, “and then we’ll move on into the system, and do more repair work. Hopefully, we can put together a larger repair package. This could give us more of an idea of what this could really cost. It just depends on what they find.
“This way, we can go ahead and get something up and running to get stuff fixed under the streets that are going to be paved and as we’ve got our year one system get into this repair and get into a larger repair project — just keep it moving.
The repair work is part of a 2013 consent decree between the city and the Environmental Protection Agency to assess, map, repair, upgrade or replace one-tenth of the city sewer system. The consent decree was reached after EPA tests indicated the city’s aging sewer system allowed untreated sewage to be released into local streams, including the Mississippi River.
In April 2015, the board approved assessing a separate monthly $5 “EPA fee” to help cover the cost of the assessment and repairs.
The board in 2015 hired Suncoast Infrastructure for $700,808 to assess and map the first one-tenth of the system, and Monday signed a new contract with the company to assess the second one-tenth.
The Riverside and Stouts Bayou lines, two of the city’s three main sewage lines, are made of clay pipe and were installed in 1908. The Levee Street main, which carries sewage to the city’s sewer treatment plant on Rifle Range Road, was installed in 1973.
A 2009 study by the city to examine the cost of replacing three main city sewer lines — the Riverside interceptor, Stouts Bayou interceptor and the Levee Street force main — put the price at $8.9 million.