City of Powell River Council will spend about $1.8 million for two pieces of equipment for the consolidated wastewater treatment plant.
At a special meeting of council on October 29, in two separate motions, councillors voted unanimously in favour of procuring the two pieces of equipment.
Councillor George Doubt said it is good to see these purchases going ahead.
“Construction will hopefully start pretty soon,” said Doubt. “I particularly like to see that these are coming in under budget and I appreciate the manager having been here answering questions to the satisfaction of the public. It’s good to see this going ahead.”
At the October 22 finance committee meeting, manager of engineering services Nagi Rizk brought forward two recommendations for the equipment. With regard to the first, Rizk recommended a contract be awarded to FRC Systems International for $506,010 plus GST for a piece of equipment called a dissolved air floatation thickener. Rizk said the equipment is to deal with sludge in the liquid waste treatment plant.
Rizk said the city received two bids and there was a substantial price difference between the two. The bid he was recommending was the low bidder, however, even with the price differential, Rizk said the city went through a matrix to determine a number of factors with regard to acquisition of the equipment. He said this is done even if there is only one bidder.
“We have to make sure it meets our requirements and the technical side is all met,” said Rizk. “We look at the long term, the maintenance part, you name it.”
Councillor George Doubt, chair of the finance committee, asked whether the bid was higher or lower than the budgeted amount.
Rizk said the cost estimate was $538,800, so the item came in under budget.
For the second piece of equipment, the finance committee considered the purchase of odour control equipment. The recommendation was for the contract to go to Biorem Technologies in the amount of $1,295,000 plus GST.
Rizk said the city received one bid, which came in below budget, but price is not the only factor.
“We have to make sure it is performing the way we want it to perform,” said Rizk.
He added that the odour control package is a multistage odour control system, which means it is more than one control of odour in that piece of equipment.
“We are trying to capture all of the odours coming from equipment that could be captured,” said Rizk. “We have captured all the pieces of equipment that are enclosed.”
Mayor Dave Formosa reminisced about when councillors, senior staff and some members of the public were down on Laburnum Avenue in the Townsite to survey the site, with representatives from AE, the engineering firm. He said at the meeting, concerns about odour were raised and there was discussion about buying a piece of equipment the engineers said Powell River didn’t need, because there would be no odour.
“I remember he [the engineer] said it would be about a million dollars to add this thing and he didn’t think it was required,” said Formosa. “All of council voted to make sure we had it. Is that this piece of equipment?”
Director of infrastructure Tor Birtig said this covers a portion of that issue.
“We are collecting the foul air from three sources,” said Birtig. “Initially, we were just going to treat the air from two of those sources, but because of council’s decision, we’ve added that third component so it gets treated through the carbon filtration.”
Birtig said with regard to the treatment plant’s exposed clarifiers and the tanks, they are not sources of odours and covering them creates all kinds of additional problems with condensation and corrosion.
“That was strongly not recommended,” said Birtig. “Odour treatment was not required.”
Formosa asked if what council had requested would be carried out. Birtig said that was the case.
Doubt said the city was putting in an odour control system that is significantly better than some other similar plants around the province.
“It costs a little bit more money but we are doing it to control the odours as well as possible and it should do an excellent job of odour control,” said Doubt.
The finance committee voted to send both matters to the special city council meeting on October 29 for adoption.
