Four companies submitted bids on construction of Chickasha new water treatment plant.
The proposals, which were opened Jan. 5, varied from “the $70 million range to the $90 million range,” City Clerk Susan McDaniel said.
Bidders were identified as Crossland Heavy Contractors of Columbus, Kansas; Downey Contracting of Oklahoma City; Walsh Construction Co. dba Archer Western of Irving, Texas; and Wynn Construction Co. of Oklahoma City, which submitted the lowest cost: $71,614,700.
The bids were reviewed by City Manager Jim Crosby, Chickasha City Engineer Scott Vaughn, and by infrastructure and engineering consultants Freese and Nichols.
A contract is expected to be awarded later this month. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Chickasha City Council and the Chickasha Municipal Authority will be on Jan. 20.
“We hope to have it on the agenda that night and award the contract,” Crosby told Southwest Ledger. After the award, the contractor will have to complete some requisite documents and then the company can mobilize and start construction in February or March, Crosby said The Oklahoma Water Resources Board approved a 30-year, $67,660,000 loan in 2023 to finance Chickasha’s new water plant.
At its Jan. 5 meeting, the City Council approved a pair of payments totaling $345,507 to the Water Board on its loan, and two payments totaling $287,559 to Freese and Nichols for their engineering services on the water treatment plant.
The City of Chickasha’s tax-exempt status may save the city “several million dollars” on material and equipment purchased to complete the project, Crosby said.
Chickasha residents approved a permanent 1.25% sales tax on Aug. 8, 2023, to retire the water plant debt and finance other capital improvements; the levy went into effect Jan. 1, 2024. The 1.25% rate replaced a Capital Improvements Program sales tax of three-fourths of a penny that expired at midnight Dec. 31, 2023.
The new facility will replace a treatment plant that was built 60 to 70 years ago, records indicate.
The existing treatment plant was designed to process 6 million gallons of drinking water daily. Now, though, its “functional capacity” is 4.2 million gallons per day to serve the 16,500 residents of Chickasha and the nearby community of Norge, Clay Herndon and Jason Cocklin of Freese and Nichols told the city council last year.
The new plant will be capable of producing up to 6 million gallons of potable water daily, and can be expanded to 8 mgd, Chickasha Municipal Authority and F&N officials have said. Production of 6 mgd “should get you out to the horizon, to about 206070,” Cocklin, a professional engineer, told the city council last year.
The plant’s treatment process will include pretreatment, clarification, filtration and disinfection, the CMA said. The plant “will have full back-up generation and redundancy,” Cocklin said.
Although the new plant will employ “conventional” water treatment methods, the technological advancements in water purification surpass what was available when Chickasha’s water treatment plant was built decades ago.
The new facility will have four filter bays and three lagoon cells for holding “residuals” from the treatment process, said Herndon, F&N’s project manager on Chickasha’s water plant.
The new facility will be built on three parcels totaling 70 acres west of the city’s aged water plant off Genevieve Street. Construction will take an estimated two years to complete.
In a related matter, the CMA voted Jan. 5 to issue a “notice of termination for convenience” to U.S. Water Services Corporation, to sever the CMA’s water and wastewater systems operations agreement with USW effective June 30, 2026.
The CMA wants to “go back out for bids and see what else is out there,” Mayor Zach Grayson said.
“We want to see if there’s a more responsible firm that can give us better service” on the operation and maintenance of Chickasha’s water and wastewater treatment plants, Crosby said.
U.S. Water’s corporate headquarters is based in New Port Richey, Florida. The company claims to operate more than 1,200 water and sewage treatment plants in the U.S., including Chickasha’s.