By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
It was a historic day for Bucyrus Tuesday as collectively the largest contracts in the city’s history were awarded for the construction of a new water treatment plant, and water transmission mains.
With bids of $22,274,000 for concrete clear wells and $21,869,000 if the city decides to use bolted steel clear wells, Danis Industrial Construction of Miamisburg, Ohio was awarded the contract to build the new water treatment plant. Both bids came in under the engineer estimate of $25 million.
Bucyrus Mayor Jeff Reser explained that the project originally began in 2006, but was delayed due to the economy.
“Shortly after the plan was formed the economy tanked, and it was about six years ago before our tax revenues could see the light at the end of the tunnel, that our tax revenues started to increase again, and former Mayor Roger Moore thought let’s get this thing going again,” Reser said.
The water transmission mains and force main project was also awarded Tuesday. Underground Utilities Inc. of Monroeville, Ohio was awarded the project with the lowest bid of $2,232,049. The engineer’s estimate for the project was $3.6 million.
“You think about the amount of money that is going to be needed to complete this project. It is exciting to know that the bids came in significantly under the engineer’s estimate,” Mayor Reser said. “So we are going to be able to save some money, and hopefully with interest rates we will be able to look at all of our future rate increases within the next year or two and see if we can’t eliminate, delay, or reduce some of those.”
The 2015 mill and pave project contract was also awarded at Bucyrus City Hall Tuesday, as Bucyrus Road Material was the winning bidder for a price of $650,743. The original estimate for the project was $653,000.