Marion will save on Oak Street line replacement

Marion will save on Oak Street line replacement

Project comes with $ 97,000 price tag

news@theeveningtimes.com

A bid to replace the incoming sewer line on Oak Street in Marion has come in at $30,000 less than originally estimated.

The city council agreed to accept the low bid from Heller Co. Inc., of Hot Springs to replace the line for $97,000.

Original estimates pegged the work at about $130,000. The next lowest bid was for $133,000.

Mayor Frank Fogleman said Heller will do pipe bursting to break up the old line and install the new line.

The line, which runs from Currie on the east to Oak Street on the west, has become brittle over the years due to the build up of methane gas.

The city dug up and replaced the outgoing line last spring for about $560,000, but has to use pipe bursting for this project because of obstructions along the line’s route.

“That one (outgoing) we could get to,” Fogleman said. “We were going down the side of a drainage ditch. So we dug it up and laid a new line. But with this one there were some concerns that there may be some buildings built over the alley and some trees and some parking pads too. So it basically made better sense to pull the new line through the old cavity.”

The line will also be upsized from a 10-inch pipe to a 12-inch pipe.

Fogleman said there aren’t a lot of users hooked in to the line, but the line is one in a series of connections in the sewer system which passes waste to another pump station.

“It’s not a large number in terms of people served,” Fogleman said. “But this is a chain in that relay link.

So even though there aren’t a large number of people who border it, waste water is coming from other areas in the link of chains.”

By Mark Randall