City Utilities committee approves multiple property purchases and contracts for water and wastewater projects

City Utilities presented and the committee approved several measures on March 17 aimed at expanding capacity and modernizing control and treatment systems for Fort Wayne’s water and wastewater operations.

Seth Wang (City Utilities) described two property acquisitions: a purchase of 2.185 acres at 2020 West Coliseum Boulevard from Genuine Parts Company for $78,000 to expand the Lincolndale drain and reduce neighborhood flooding, and a purchase of 0.549 acres at 2801 Adam Center Road from Parish Leasing Inc. for $15,000 to site a sanitary sewer lift station for the South Maumee relief sewer project. Wang said the Coliseum parcel was acquired for less than 60% of appraised value and that the purchase funds come from Stormwater Revenue; the Adam Center purchase will use sewer revenues.

Matthew Wirtz, City Utilities, outlined three engineering and construction items. He described S-2631, a professional services agreement with Donahue and Associates not to exceed $434,500 to complete the fourth and final package of SCADA migration (supervisory control and data acquisition) for the drinking-water plant and remote facilities. Wirtz also presented S-26316, a $2,830,000 construction contract with Thieneman Construction to replace piping, bubblers and diffusers in three aeration basins (of nine) at the wastewater plant, and S-26314, a professional services agreement with Wessler Engineering not to exceed $186,700 for construction management and resident project representative services during that work.

Wirtz also introduced S-26315, design work (Donahue and Associates) for a proposed high-rate wet-weather treatment facility. He said the design would be for a facility sized around 30 million gallons per day and that building conventional treatment to achieve the same capacity would be "about 25 to $30,000,000"; Wirtz characterized the new approach as a cost-effective way to treat stored wet-weather flows and avoid sending all flows through the main plant. He emphasized the current contract is for design only; a construction package would come back next year.

All measures in the City Utilities table were called for passage and recorded by the clerk as nine members in favor and none opposed.

Next steps include property closings, contracting and staged construction and design: the aeration-basin construction will proceed in phased work so only a subset of basins are taken offline at a time, and the high-rate treatment item will return as a construction package after design work is complete.