Bids out for reduced waterline upgrades in St. C. | News, Sports, Jobs



St. Clairsville Safety and Service Director Jeremy Greenwood, right, speaks Monday with Councilwoman Kristi Lipscomb. Greenwood reviewed plans to replace and upgrade waterlines throughout the city. Due to inflation, the scope of the project has been reduced.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – When the city learned of a $5 million infrastructure grant from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in early December, it seemed upgrades to the aging water distribution system would be covered.

Due to inflation, though, those dollars are not going as far as they used to, and the city is moving forward with a smaller project with more stages in the future.

Safety and Service Director Jeremy Greenwood announced the $7 million project has gone out to bid. The cost is about the same as the original project, but its scope has been reduced. Originally, officials had intended to upgrade waterlines throughout the city, but costs for every service have nearly doubled the $7 million cost.

“Everything just costs so much,” he said.

The project will now happen on Main Street through the city and sections of some other streets and alleys, including Reservoir Road.

“That will let us … get rid of some of the oldest lines we have. We have 1929 waterlines,” Greenwood said. “That’ll allow us to have the major distribution sections going through. … It will be bid the first part of November. We’ll know where the numbers are. We’re anticipating about $7.8 million. We’ve got the $5 million grant, and we’re borrowing another $2-$2.5 million.

“The main problem is still access and availability of materials. It just is what it is,” he said.

He expects a contractor to be hired by December or January and to begin work in March. The waterline upgrades could be complete by early 2024.

“It’ll be a major improvement for everything. Hopefully it knocks our water loss numbers down,” Greenwood said. “It’s one of those things that allows us just to keep moving forward, and there’s no doubt that there’s more work that needs done. We have whole other areas of the city that need worked on. We just have to be as responsible with the money as we can.”

Additional projects will be scheduled later to address the waterlines not covered in the upcoming work.

“Instead of all of that, what we were planning, now it’s just this. We’re going to have to come back and do this northern section and the southern section, so you’re talking maybe three more projects,” Greenwood said.

He would not speculate about when or how much.

“My hope is that there’s additional funds that become available for infrastructure because we’ve got it drawn already, it’s shovel-ready, it’s literally ready to go. So if there’s more funds that become available, we can move fast,” Greenwood said.

The prospect of citywide waterline replacement meant council had postponed street paving since there was no point in paving a road that would be torn up later to install a new waterline.

“Some of it, we’re going to be able to do on these streets once we get the water done. Some of these other streets where we thought we were going to be putting water, they’re going to have to wait a little longer. We’re going to look at a couple other things, coating streets, doing other stuff to help tie it in together, hopefully make it last a little longer,” Greenwood said.

In addition, the city is also waiting to install a new main waterline from the water treatment plant. Since August 2021, the city has been fed water through a temporary line that crosses INterstate 70 on the surface of Reservoir Road after city employees found the line that ran under I-70 was leaking.

“We’re going to start on that hopefully at the end of this month,” Greenwood said.

The work will begin once an Ohio Department of Transportation paving project on I-70 is complete.

“As soon as they say ‘all clear,’ we’re going to try to move in,” he said. “We’re still on the record of the contractor … but he might have something else coming up that he might not be able to break away to get right away to us.”

The price would be $750,000-$850,000. Greenwood said he anticipates being able to run the new waterline through the old one’s culvert for a savings.

“Right now, we were able to verify. The ODOT contractor (Border Patrol) let us get in there and get down to our existing culvert, the casement that went across, verify the condition of it at least in the center of the interstate,” Greenwood said.

That work could be completed in two or three weeks.

The city has placed a traffic control light on Reservoir Road since the temporary line was installed.

“The traffic control alone is costing us almost $8,000 a month,” Greenwood said. “It’s cost us $40,000-$50,000 just for traffic control.”



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