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Water Agency Opens Plymouth Pipeline Bids |
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Monday, 27 October 2008 |
 By Jim Reece - The Amador Water Agency opened bids for the Plymouth Water Pipeline Project with nine companies all undercutting the latest estimated cost and the low bid totaling a politician-pleasing 5.3 Million. Mountain Cascade offered the lowest bid for the water pipeline that would link the Tanner Water Treatment Plant on Ridge Road with the Plymouth water tank on Fiddletown Road. Mountain Cascade offered 5,299,549 dollars to finish the project. Plymouth Finance Director Jeffry Gardner looked through the Mountain Cascade bid Thursday in Plymouth City Hall, two hours after the 2 p.m. bid opening. Gardner said the bid was 3.8 Million Dollars less than the latest engineering estimate on the project, which was 9.1 Million Dollars. He said the low bid was 42 percent less than the engineers’ estimate. In part, that was because Segment 6, to be paid for entirely by the city of Plymouth, was 50 percent below estimates. Segment 1, to be paid for 76 percent by the AWA and 24 percent by Plymouth, came in at 55 percent of estimated costs. Gardner said the low bids in lean economic times had another potential bonus for ratepayers. “So we are going to try to find out if we are even going to have to do a rate increase now,” Gardner said. The Plymouth City Council got the ball rolling on the bid process by determining rate hikes in order to have a financial plan in place to finance loans for the pipeline. Gardner said that Plymouth’s share of the pipeline, with participation fees, would be about 4.5 million to 5 million dollars. The latest estimate, 9.1 million dollars, would have cost Plymouth about 6.8 million dollars and the AWA about 2 million. All bids came in under 9 Million Dollars. The highest was 8.75 Million dollar bid by McGuire and Hester. Second lowest bidder was JMB Construction at 5.8 Million. Teichert & Sons bid 6.06 Million, Veerkamp General Engineering bid 6.3 Million, T&S Construction bid 6.5 Million, and Sundt Construction bid 6.9 Million. Ranger Pipelines, builders of the Amador Pipeline, bid 7.4 million dollars and HPS Mechanical bid 7.6 Million. Two of the 11 companies that took the bid walk along the pipeline footprint between Sutter Creek and Plymouth, but did not bid. Not bidding were Granite Construction and Vinciguerra Construction. An August 28th report by the Amador Water Agency estimated the Plymouth Pipeline as an 11.5 Million Dollar project.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 27 October 2008 )
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