Sewer bids being taken

April 19, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - The city's extension of utilities to the new Mat-Su Regional Medical Center is a go - even if it doesn't yet have the last few million dollars.

"What is most important in getting this project out on the street is getting it in the hands of contractors," Public Works Director Rick Koch said. "The industry will tell us what the real cost is."

The estimate is $14.4 million; the city has secured $11 million so far through grants and its own 25-percent commitment. That may not be enough to pay for the entire project, but it's enough for the sewer portion alone, Koch said.

Tuesday, the city council unanimously authorized Koch to solicit bids for sewer-only construction.

Originally, the city's plan was to put sewer and water lines in one trench, with a 3-foot separation between pipes. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation halved its usual requirement of a 10-foot separation between sewer and water, but the agency would go no further - in effect, mandating two trenches. That raised the cost of the project by an estimated $1 million.

Yet this is not the final word from DEC. Koch appealed, arguing that science and empirical evidence support the safety of the one-trench design.

DEC Commissioner Tom Irwin has asked for the outside opinions of two professors of civil engineering: Craig Woolard, from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Dan White, from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The team is still looking over all the documents and plans to report its findings to the commissioner by April 24.

If DEC bends, there will be "no money problems," Koch said. But Koch and the council aren't banking on it: The clock is ticking on this year's construction season. The city has almost all of the rights of way and is currently negotiating with "cooperative" landowners for the last bits, according to project engineer Scott Hattenburg.

Koch argued that if "the economies offered by putting (the lines) in the same trench anyway are not available," and there's enough money to begin, there's no good reason to wait.

The city still intends to complete both the water and sewer lines. To that end, the council, at its Tuesday meeting, looked for a couple of other ways to fill the money gap. City manager Tom Healy called it all part of management's "'no stone left unturned' funding strategy."

Amerada Hess support

The council unanimously approved a resolution to support Gov. Frank Murkowski's use of Amerada Hess settlement funds for capital improvement projects.

These Exxon Valdez oil-spill out-of-court settlement funds were placed in a part of the permanent fund that does not affect dividends, Healy explained to the council.

The governor's administration has said there are safeguards on the $424 million so the state will still be able to pay off bonds.

The statewide project list includes three projects in the Valley: $13 million for constructing a Bogard Road extension, $6 million for environmental studies for an extension of the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, and $2 million for environmental studies of a Parks Highway and Alaska Railroad corridor. Another $30.6 million has been earmarked for the Glenn Highway at Bragaw Street.

"As to whether or not it's a good deal, I'm not prepared to comment on that," Healy said. But he recommended the resolution of support, because the funds were a "possible mechanism for the state funding a portion of the sewer-water extension."

Council member Tony Pippel noted that there were a number of competing capital spending plans currently in the Legislature that provided less money for the Valley.

Another million dollars?

The utility extension tops the city's project list in priority. But DEC funded two lower-priority Palmer projects first for its fiscal year 2006 grant program.

The money hasn't been appropriated yet, but when the bill gets to that committee, the city has asked that Sen. Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, redirect the funding to the proper project.

DEC's ranking criteria require the agency to fund two lower-priority city projects first because they are ongoing. The current bill earmarks around $735,000 for replacement of steel water-main replacements all over Palmer, and $250,000 for replacement outfall lines from the waste-water treatment plant to the Matanuska River.

Koch said the state, however, proposed that a change in the scope of the funding, "a few words of change in the language of the appropriating bill," would move the $1 million from those projects to the utility extension.

The city can reapply to fund them in the next budget cycle. Koch said he thought the two projects could wait a year. The water lines scheduled for repair have not had catastrophic or even any minor failures yet.

"We don't have water shooting out of the ground," he assured the council.

City attorney Jack Snodgrass likened the shift to robbing Peter to pay Paul. "Can we recover that?" he asked the council.

Temporarily abandoning the two projects seemed like a last-ditch effort to council members, who, at previous meetings, had discussed asking the hospital or the Mat-Su Borough to front some of the missing money for the project.

But Healy said the borough was "stretched for money." Neither does the hospital seem a promising source: Its officials cited "difficulties with the joint venture" of which the hospital is a part, Healy said, that would make such finagling too financially risky.

Healy recommended the legislative wordsmithing. No matter how frustrated city and council may be, he said, the project's expansion of services will still benefit the city.

Council members may not have liked the situation - "Don't they have any responsibility?" Pippel grumbled of the hospital and borough - but they agreed.

"I think we did make that commitment and we made it our number-one priority," Combs said.

"OK, we're in for another million bucks," Pippel said.

Contact Kate Golden at

352-2284 or kate.golden@

frontiersman.com.