Upgrades to Culver’s water treatment facility are substantially complete. Mark Sullivan with Midwestern Engineers told the Culver Town Council Tuesday that the new plant has been up and running for a few months. “Arguably, we were having the new plant treat water in the middle of October, but the final fluoride feed, the final chlorine feed, all the chemicals were all being done on a temporary basis,” he said. “So it was officially final November 2.” Sullivan says that official date is important, since it determines when the contractor’s one-year warranty period begins.
The new water treatment plant was originally scheduled to be finished by July, but Sullivan said issues with the filter pushed completion into September. “There was probably another couple of weeks when they were doing the bypass line to accommodate the changes in the filter, again no fault of the contractor,” he said. “There’s probably about 30 days where the contractor probably could have helped himself and been done a little bit quicker. I don’t know that he helped himself or helped expedite the project, so that may be up to discussion.”
The project’s final cost appears to be $6,000 under budget, but Culver Town Attorney Jim Clevenger says that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. “Well it’s a little bit misleading to say it’s under budget because we settled for something a little less than what we had originally designed,” he said. That resulted in a deduction of $30,000, but $24,000 was added back in other costs.
For now, Sullivan says there are a few punch list items that remain, mainly involving the cleanup of the new facility. He suggested that the council finalize the value of those items at its next meeting.
