High lagoon bids might slow progress

It was certainly a good news bad news situation for the Town of Plains last week. Mayor Dan Rowan was notified that the town received the deed for the 10 acres for their new sewer lagoon site. Things were looking up. Then, the mayor got news that only three companies bid on the construction of the new lagoon — not a bad thing in itself — but they were all over $6-million.

“I got to celebrate for a few minutes, then I got word of that,” said Rowan, who added that even with receiving $7.3-million in grants, they don’t have enough in the budget to cover such high bids. “The design engineer’s estimate was $5,475,000 at the time of the bid, which had been increased already due to the project delays,” said Rowan. 

Prospect Construction Inc. of Puyallup, Washington, with an office in Missoula, had the lowest bid at $6,152,752. It was followed by S&L Underground, Inc. of Bonners Ferry, Idaho, which had a bid of $6,697,053. Dick Anderson Construction of Missoula bid $6,803,710. Bidding opened on January 11. Rowan had hoped for more companies to participate in the bidding and although he knew it was going to cost more due to COVID delays and a rise in costs due to the delay in getting the property, he didn’t realize the bids would be as high as they were. 

“The current market conditions are impossible to predict,” said Shari Johnson, the town’s contract engineer, who wrote the bid proposal. “I had hoped it wouldn’t be as high as it was. The town made all the choices they could to help keep bids low” she said. “When we went for this we had full funding, but after the land payment and with Covid problems and inflation, we just don’t have enough to pay for it,” said Rowan. 

The town filed eminent domain action to get the land, but agreed to pay Nick and Erika Lawyer $472,000 for the needed property. The town took out a $520,000 loan to pay the additional cost. Nick Lawyer said last weekend that the settlement reached went for the 10 acres and damage done to some of the remaining property. He said that just over three acres had been damaged, but that as of Saturday no agreement had been reached for the value of that damage. He and his wife signed over the title and well setback restriction deed.

“Legal and professional fees accrued since mediation (October 26) remain outstanding and no agreement has been reached on who is responsible for paying for these expenses,” said Lawyer, which he said included moving the well, which Rowan said the town agreed to do and would cost an additional $20,000. “Erika and I are now comfortable saying part of an agreement has been reached. However there are still several areas to which there is no agreed-upon terms,” Nick said.

With the bidding setback, the town applied for $2 million  from the American Rescue Plan Act. The mayor said that the setback doesn’t necessarily mean construction on the project would be delayed. He added that there is other grant funding that could be pursued. “There are also loans, they are a last resort but are available,” said Rowan.  

Lawyer said he’s pleased that the “much needed work on our sewer system will continue to move forward.” He added that he was disappointed that the town chose the path of eminent domain and that they incurred such legal expenses in the process of forcing the sale of property that he had planned to be housing. 

“We are in the middle of a historically tight home supply in western Montana and this project in this location further limits available housing in the valley,” said Lawyer, who believes the location of the new system is either in or near the floodway and is vulnerable from the Clark Fork River. He also feels the cost of installing the treatment plant in this chosen location exceeded the cost associated with the two alternative sites. “As we have maintained from the very beginning Erika and I simply wanted to be fairly compensated,” said Lawyer, who believes legal battles for the project will continue. “We offered to negotiate with the town on multiple occasions, and ultimately it was negotiations that allowed this project to move forward. But we were disappointed to have them file a lawsuit instead,” he said. “Nobody likes being forced to sell their land.”