Council votes to temporarily halt construction at WRRF site

By Kelly Terpstra, kterpstra@charlescitypress.com

Work has been put on hold at the $19 million water resource recovery facility (WRRF) in Charles City.

The City Council approved a resolution at a special meeting on Thursday night to halt construction of the 80,000-square-foot activated-sludge plant that had a completion date set for June 2022.

Work began early last October at the facility, which will be able to handle approximately 3.5 million gallons of aerobically stabilized biosolids when finished. Initially the thought was the WRRF would be operational by December 2021.

Now it looks like both those dates will be extended for at least another three months after it was discovered through a paperwork snafu that the environmental review that was necessary for construction to begin on the Shaw Avenue property has not been completed.

“Basically the DNR has to do two things. They issue a construction permit and they decoupled that issuance from the environmental review,” said Lance Aldrich, with Fox Engineering. “We sent information to them on the foundries of the site last summer and we found out a week ago that they sat on it – have taken no action.”

Fox Engineering was hired to do the design work on the project by the city. Aldrich stated he was told by the DNR that it would be a minimum of a two-month wait before construction started back up and more likely that period could last three months.

Steve Troyer with Fox Engineering said the Iowa DNR used to not issue a construction permit until the environmental work was complete.

That procedure has been changed in the last year or two, according to Aldrich.

“They changed that in the last year or two on the wastewater side – not the water side – where they’ll issue it prior to the environmental being done,” said Charles City City Administrator Steve Diers. “It sounds like the assumption was made that we got the construction permit and a number of months had gone by. The assumption was made that the environmental was done, but we had not received an official letter that it was.”

Diers said some environmental work has been completed, specifically at a staging area near the site that is building oxidation ditches, equalization basins and reed beds. That staging area now has rock over it.

“Now it’s a matter of getting the rest of the environmental completed,” he said.

Aldrich said the state historical preservation office has to approve the environmental work done and it has 30 days to get that finalized. There is also a 30-day comment period of publication notice.

“That’s kind of what sets the schedule,” said Aldrich.

Aldrich said the letter that was supposed to be sent to the historical office was never sent by the Iowa DNR.

Council member DeLaine Freeseman questioned Aldrich why his firm didn’t inquire to find out if the environmental review was complete after several months had passed and four payments totaling over $1.5 million had already been paid to the contractor, Portzen Construction, as of last week.

“That’s where we’re really at because we contracted with you guys to manage this process and to me that’s what we look to you guys to do — to make sure all the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed. Obviously, this was a big T that didn’t get crossed somewhere,” said Freeseman.

“None of us can say they didn’t tell us. I went back and read the letter,” said Aldrich.

Now the issue becomes whether the city’s loan application for up to $17 million in the State Revolving Loan (SRF) – much of it planned to fund the WRRF upon approval – will still be accepted by the state. The remainder of the $19.5 million project cost of $2.3 million could be covered with existing cash on hand.

“They said you need to stop work right now if you want to keep SRF loan eligible,” said Aldrich.

Aldrich said he believes the state loan that the city applied for should be safe for now pending approval of the environmental work that needs to be done.

“I think the DNR realizes that they didn’t do their job when they were supposed to do it and are doing now everything they can now to facilitate it moving forward,” said Aldrich. “I think we’re over the hump of the concern that they’re going to not fund the project with SRF.”

The City Council voted unanimously last August to award Portzen Construction the project to replace the city’s 55-year-old wastewater treatment plant. The low bid of $16.95 million from the construction company out of Dubuque came in $575,000 under the city’s estimated cost to build the new activated sludge plant.

The new facility will help reduce nitrogen and phosphorus from the city’s discharge – two nutrients that have been identified by the Iowa DNR that are required to be reduced under the city’s most recent permit issued in 2014.

Creation of equalization basins, that help with heavy water flows, is also a key component to the project.

Another facet of the proposed undertaking is reed bed installation. The bio-solids left over from treating wastewater create a sludge that needs to be hauled off from the current site. Once completed, the beds will naturally dewater the sludge and be able to turn it into dry compost material that can more easily be removed.

Portzen stopped working on the site on Monday and Aldrich said he didn’t feel the construction company would pull out of its contract.

“As far as I can tell they’re fully onboard of being OK with the delay as far as not wanting to cancel the contract,” said Aldrich.

Aldrich said legally they cannot back out of the contract within a 90-day period, but they can ask for added compensation during that time because of loss of work and expense incurred for renting equipment, etc.

“Contractually speaking, after 90 days the contractor could say, we’re walkin’” said Diers.

Diers had more to say about the developing situation at hand for numerous parties involved in the work stoppage.

“It really falls on us and Fox – who we’ve hired to oversee this – that we didn’t receive the environmental letter of completion. So then work was started. Since that environmental piece has to be completed, the project’s stopped,” he said.

Diers said it was a “fair assessment” that the delay will likely increase costs.

“Who ultimately pays for that – that’s still up for negotiation and debate,” he said.

Council member Jerry Joerger said he is hopeful the paperwork can be expedited and quick negotiations can allow the construction crew to get back to work and finish the job they started.

“We need maximum pressure because we’ve got a big liability there. If we hold the contractor up too long we have to start talking finances,” said Joerger. “We need a full-court press.”

Mayor Dean Andrews said the oversight was a “shared responsibility.”

Council member Keith Starr said, “The DNR might have dropped the ball, but at the other end we didn’t read a letter to move forward with all full approval. So let’s not be passing the buck too far down to Des Moines. Let’s step up here and take a look at what it is.”