BonnerSprings.com

Jesse Truesdale

jtruesdale@theworldco.info

Bonner Springs will be hitting several birds with the same set of stones this year. At its Monday night meeting the City Council approved a supplemental design agreement with Wilson & Company adding $207,000 worth of engineering work to the contract already in place for the company to design the Wolf Creek Sanitary Sewer and Front Street Improvements.

With the Council's vote the sewer project gains two components: the realignment of the Pratt Street and Grandview Interceptor, which will consist of the installation of a 15-inch gravity sanitary sewer pipeline along Garfield Avenue to the ridgeline of the Grandview and Spring Creek tributary basin north of Metropolitan Avenue.

The realignment would redirect what is predicted by the city's utility staff to be increased flow from the Grandview Interceptor sewer line to the Wolf Creek Interceptor. The new alignment would consist of about 3,800 feet of new sewer main along Pratt Avenue.

The total cost of the alignment was already included in the $11,000,000 expenditure approved for the Wolf Creek Sewer System.

The realignment would open up for development the area north of Grandview and north of Metropolitan Avenue, City Manager John Helin said.

On the Front Street improvements, a handful of new components were added, most importantly the replacement of the water main. The design cost is $38,000 and the estimated construction cost is $502,000. The construction and design costs will be paid for by the issuance of a bond in September.

The current water main is 30 years old, cast iron and "really brittle," said Rick Sailler, director of utilities for the city. The main has broken six times, he said.

Also included in the supplemental agreement with Wilson was the design for an archaeological survey for the Wolf Creek sewer project. The cost is projected to be minimal, Helin's report said, and the design cost is $3,500.

The agreement includes a bid for a belt filter press and blowers for the biosolids handling project, which will be the construction of a biosolids treatment facility to improve the city's current wastewater treatment plant.

Sailler had said earlier the sludge facility would cost an estimated $1 million.

Currently the city trucks its biosolids to a Deffenbaugh landfill, at the rate of about one dump truck a day, Sailler said. The city pays for the right to dump at the landfill as it has since the wastewater treatment plant came online just more than 20 years ago a

In 2006 the biosolids-dumping fees cost the city $73,000.

The project design will be paid for through general obligation temporary notes totaling $1,294,000 issued in July 2006 by the city to fund the design.

The Council voted to approve as part of the supplemental agreement a maximum of $61,000 worth of design for storm sewer improvements for Front Street, which Helin said would be for some but not all of the recommended improvements in a study by Wilson after a heavy rain in August 2004. The recommendations included the replacing of deficient or damaged inlets, pipes and manholes at eight locations along Front Street between Elm and K-7, and the replacement of others, and installing some new storm sewer components.

The estimated cost of the construction for all the recommended improvements in the Wilson report was $389,200, but the actual improvements should cost less.

"We need to do it all," Council member Lloyd Mesmer argued in a study session before the regular meeting.

Mesmer didn't see the sense in "putting a truckload of money into this street, and leaving one little item out."

Council member Tom Stephens asked how often and for how long the street closed as a result of heavy rain: "one incident that lasts an hour every year?"

Helin said it probably was less than that.

Also included in the supplemental agreement approved by the Council was design for streetscape improvements to Front Street. The construction of the improvements - which will include curb and gutter sidewalk ADA-compliant ramps, driveway pavement markings, a guard rail, landscaping on the south side of the street, and an improvement to the intersection at Warner and Front streets, new lighting, a brick-lined sidewalk and decorative street signs to match Oak Street. - will be funded in two phases. The city has applied for a grant from the Enhancement Project program to cover 75 percent of the construction costs.

TEP awards, which are funded by the federal government and administered by KDOT, will be announced in May or June.

The last item added to the agreement with Wilson was the addition of ownership and encumbrance reports, which Helin said were necessary because the engineering firm's study showed more construction easements would be needed for the Front Street work than previously believed.

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