CHICKASHA — A $71,759,090 contract with Wynn Construction Co. to build a new 6 million gallons per day water treatment plant was executed Monday night by the City Council and the Municipal Authority.
City Manager Jim Crosby said the “notice to proceed” with the job will be issued at a pre-construction meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday with representatives of Wynn Construction and the engineering consultants, Freese and Nichols.
The contractor is expected to spend two to three weeks mobilizing its equipment and probably will start construction on or about April 1, Crosby told The Lawton Constitution on Tuesday. The contract calls for “substantial completion” of the work within 700 days, and “final completion” of the contract in 730 days – two years.
The new WTP is designed to produce 6 million gallons of potable water each day, with the ability to expand production to 8 million gallons per day in the future. Production of 6 mgd “should get you out to the horizon, to about 2060-70,” Jason Cocklin, a professional engineer with F&N, told the city council last year.
Although the new plant will employ “conventional” water treatment methods, technological advancements in water purification surpass what was available when Chickasha’s water treatment plant was built 60 or 70 years ago (the precise age has not been determined).
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 17,000 residents of Chickasha and the nearby community of Norge, Cocklin and Clay Herndon, F&N’s project manager on Chickasha’s water plant, told the city council last year.
The existing plant will be demolished after the new treatment plant becomes operational, according to Gary McDaniel, project manager for U.S. Water Services Corp., which manages/operates Chickasha’s water and wastewater treatment plants.
In a related matter, the CMA voted Jan. 5 to issue a “notice of termination for convenience” to U.S. Water Services Corp., to sever the CMA’s water and wastewater systems operations agreement with USW effective June 30, 2026.
“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, said Crosby.
The Chickasha Municipal Authority opened four bids for the water plant project on Jan. 5:
•Wynn Construction Co. of Oklahoma City: $71,759,090.
•Walsh Construction Co. II dba Archer Western of Irving, Texas: $79,628,620.
•Crossland Heavy Constructors of Columbus, Kansas: $73,151,000.
•Downey Contracting, also of OKC: $90,983,261.
Elements that will be built during the project, records indicate, include: Rapid mix, flocculation and sedimentation basins; gravity filters and associated backwash components; chemical storage and feed facilities, a partially buried 800,000-gallon clearwell to receive flows from the filters and to provide a storage reservoir, a transmission pump station and transmission main to convey treated water to the distribution system, an on-site septic system for sanitary waste from the treatment plant, standby power generation, three lagoon cells for holding “residuals” from the treatment process, and a filter/ administration building to house gravity filters, office and laboratory space, and electric equipment.
Freese and Nichols is the design professional and construction manager for Chickasha’s water plant project.
The company will be paid $3,950,000 for its engineering scope of services during “construction and commissioning” of the new water plant, records show.
F&N will make 26 monthly visits to the construction site “to observe the progress and the quality of work, to determine whether the work is proceeding in accordance with the construction contract documents,” records show. F&N also will visit the site up to 12 additional times to “provide additional specialty observation or inspection as may be required for the project.”
F&N will provide a construction manager for the duration of construction.
A “resident project representative” (RPR) will be the engineer’s agent at the site.
RPR services are “estimated to average 45 hours per week over the 26-month duration of construction” up to final completion.”
OWRB approves $67.66M loan for new water plant; city seeks another $6M The Oklahoma Water Resources Board approved a 30-year, $67,660,000 loan in 2023 to finance Chickasha’s new water plant. In addition, “a little over” $5 million in reserves were committed to the project, Crosby said. In addition, the city has been collecting interest on the loan for about two and a half years. The OWRB is expected to vote on a supplemental $6 million loan to the City of Chickasha at its March 17 meeting, Crosby said. Those funds will be used to replace the reserves dedicated to the water plant project, “so we’ll have some money to handle any emergencies that may arise,” he explained.
A condition of receiving the new OWRB loan is that the city complete its Fiscal Year 2024 audit by April 1, Crosby said.
An amortization schedule provided to Southwest Ledger by Joe Freeman, now-retired chief of the Water Board’s Financial Assistance Division, shows the interest rate on Chickasha’s $67.66 million loan is 5.20% through 2029; drops a full percentage point to 4.20% from 2040 through 2048; then creeps up to 4.325% through the last payment on Sept. 15, 2053.
The Municipal Authority is current on its debt service payments to the OWRB. For example, the CMA made three payments of $345,507.71 each to the OWRB on Jan.
5 and 20 and on Feb. 16, records reflect.
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.
Mike W. Ray is a fifth-generation, award-winning journalist who has more than 55 years’ experience covering municipal, county, state and federal government in Oklahoma and Texas. He can be reached at mike.ray@swoknews.com.