Lacey City Council awards contract to replace aging Lift Station 6

Lift Station 6, one of Lacey's oldest wastewater stations, is on its way out. 

An a meeting on May 5, the Lacey City Council voted unanimously to award an approximately $1.85 million contract to replace the lift station. The contract also addresses water line replacement, a flooding problem on 32nd Court SE, as well as a number of other issues.

Barcott Construction LLC of Chehalis won the job after nine companies submitted bids after the city advertised the project in March. The winning bid of $1,847,251.46 landed well below the engineer's estimate of $2,296,501.26. 

Lacey Utility Engineer Ryan Jewell walked the city council through the project at the meeting. The old wet pit/dry pit station near Hicks Lake, just east of Ruddell Road, will be torn down and replaced with a submersible lift station on a city-owned parcel at 5611 32nd Court SE. 

Along 32nd Court SE, an old asbestos cement water line will be pulled out and replaced with 510 linear feet of 6-inch water main. Another 620 linear feet of 4-inch sanitary sewer force main and 45 linear feet of 8-inch storm drain will also go in, along with three catch basins, wet well and manhole coatings, valves, water meters, and pavement and lawn restoration. 

Jewell told the council the storm drain installation will address a nuisance flooding problem at a nearby property. 

The job is scheduled to begin in July and will run 250 working days, a timeline that drew questions from City Council member Nicolas Dunning.

Jewell attributed the duration to the demands of overhauling a live wastewater system without any lapse in service. 

"The project does need to be phased so that the existing lift station remains in service during construction," Jewell said. "Part of the project is replacing a generator, so our contractor is going to have to bring in a temporary generator, so the existing lift station has backup power. There are a lot of moving pieces to make sure we maintain that service throughout the construction process, which can extend that duration." 

City Council member Maren Turner asked about the gap between the low bid and engineer's estimate.

Mayor Andy Ryder said pre-bid projections are never a firm indicator of what contractors will submit. 

"You don't really know until you advertise and see the unsealed bids," Ryder said. "It can be way over the estimate, it can be way under. We're just using it as a placeholder for budgetary purposes." 

The city budgeted $2.4 million for the project. In Lacey's 2023-24 Capital Facilities Plan, lift station replacements are among the city's highest-ranked infrastructure investments.

Lower maintenance costs and improved performance over time are the factors cited by the city in support of the priority of replacing the lift station, which has been in use since the 1970s.