Committee approves $559,672 purchase-order increase for biosolids hauling as incinerator remains out of service

The High Point Finance Committee on May 28 approved an increase to a purchase order with McGill Environmental Systems NC, Inc., raising the limit from $167,240 to $559,672 to pay for hauling and disposal of dewatered biosolids while the city's incinerator is out of service.

Water Resource Director Allison Craft told the committee the incinerator has experienced issues that make it inefficient or unusable, so the city has been moving to hauling options. "We're continuing to have issues with our incinerator and so the costs for the hauling are basically taking the place of the cost of the diesel that we were using to run the incinerator in a very inefficient manner," Craft said. She described using multiple disposal options — Waste Management (landfill), Republic (trucking), and McGill (compost facility) — to provide redundancy if weather or capacity issues prevent a single vendor from accepting material.

Craft said the PO increase reflects greater hauling volumes and heavier material when the incinerator is offline (pressed biosolid sludge is heavier than ash), and that staff are investigating the exact incinerator fault and expect repairs to be costly and take time. As context, she said another facility pursuing a design-build replacement put that program in the roughly $2.5 million range.

The committee approved item 2026-177 by motion and second. Craft said staff plans a future RFP to secure more robust disposal service arrangements while the city completes a long-term assessment of biosolids processing options.

Next steps: staff to provide additional cost estimates for incinerator repair or replacement, issue an RFP for hauling/disposal services to secure redundancy, and report back with recommendations for a long-term biosolids strategy.