Newport council signs wastewater contracts

NEWPORT – The Newport City Council voted to approve contracts with J-U-B Engineers, Inc. to get started working on the city’s wastewater problem, both the collections and treatment.

A contract for professional services with J-U-B for $1.54 million was approved, as was a $873,610 contract for design work on collection of wastewater.

Work will start this summer and is expected to be completed by spring of 2025.

City Administrator Abby Gribi said improving the collection system isn’t as complicated as rebuilding the wastewater plant.

“The collection is bringing it to somewhere and the treatment is where all the magic happens,” Gribi said to chuckles from the council members. Mayor Keith Campbell wasn’t present, nor was councilmember Nathan Longley. She said she and engineers looked for the least costly and best alternative. She said they looked at several alternatives, including “a complete and total gut and overhaul,” of the wastewater treatment plant.

That was where they started.

“We looked at everything new and then we started cutting it back,” she said. She said power and life safety issues were two things that needed to be delt with. There is no generator at the wastewater treatment plant and some areas where health and safety issues need to be dealt with.

Part of the problem is that the wastewater pipes are filled with grit, largely cause by manhole covers with holes in them. That allowed rocks and sand to get into the pipes.

Some of the pipes had significant amounts of grit, Gribi said. She said 8 inches of sediment in a pipe was what was anticipated, but one pipe they looked at that they thought was a 15-inch pipe was actually an 18-inch pipe.

Lane Merritt, an engineer with J-U-B, said the manhole covers with holes made things far worse.

“So years and years and years of water bringing rocks, which we call grit, into the collection system has led to a disastrous scenario where all our pipes are compromised because they’re so full of sediment,” he said. He said one of the first thing that had to be done was to stop the sediment getting into the pipes and to clean them.

Gribi said the process will take years, maybe a decade, and cost a lot. She said much of the process could be paid for with forgivable loans, which the council approved at the previous council meeting. She said it could be done in phases and phases can be changed as needed. “We aren’t locked into ‘this is the only path forward,’” she said. “It is a significant price tag once we start getting into that.”

Gribi said there was a possibility that a Department of Ecology loan, which is now a 50-50 loan, meaning the city has to come up with half, could turn into a 75-25 loan, with more of the money could forgiven.