ES council waives bidding on $54,000 sewer pump

The Eureka Springs City Council voted unanimously to enact an emergency clause and approve a resolution waiving competitive bidding on a much-needed replacement sewer pump.

At its regular meeting held Monday, Nov. 13 at The Auditorium, the council approved three readings, two by title only, of a resolution authorizing the expenditure of $54,051.08 on a new sewer pump from Evans Enterprises Inc.

“We couldn’t find another source so we’re sole-sourcing,” Mayor Butch Berry told council members. “We need to do it as soon as possible in order to keep our sewer plant running.”

The cost includes an extra $6,400 to get the pump production and delivery expedited, said Simon Wiley, the city’s public works director.

“If we don’t get it expedited we’re looking at at least two to four months on getting it and we’re trying to get it in six to eight weeks,” Wiley said.

The vote came after the council heard an update earlier in the meeting on the issues with the sewer plant from Wiley and Zane Lewis from McClelland Consulting Engineers, who has been retained by the city to help with the situation.

“Back in probably 2019, 2020, the city was put under a consent order by ADEQ for some issues at the sewer plant and I just found out about it a few weeks ago,” Wiley said. “They’re working … to get some of those issues resolved. We had to answer some questions to ADEQ recently so I had to put McClelland on retainer, I guess, essentially to try to deal with some of the issues we’re having.”

Lewis explained to the council some of the issues that are going on at the plant, including the issue of wastewater being spilled into a creek and rocks getting into the equipment at the plant.

“There was a spill of wastewater into the creek and that was reported to the ADEQ, and so there’s been basically some correspondence that they’ve required to be issued by a registered engineer to confirm that the steps that are being taken by the staff and by the utility are going to remedy these problems and make sure they don’t happen again,” Lewis said.