Harmar rejects bids for Highland Woods pump station project

Facing double the expected costs for the Highland Woods pump station project, the Harmar supervisors are searching for another way forward.

The supervisors Thursday rejected the bids received from two contracting firms to do the work.

That work includes replacing more than 2,000 feet of sewer lines and rebuilding the associated pump station, which serves 40 dwellings and one commercial business, said township engineer Matt Pitsch.

Bids received for the project included one close to $790,000 from W.A. Petrakis Contracting Inc. and nearly $910,000 from SET Inc.

Speaking of the project cost estimate, Pitsch said, “We had it at about $400,000.”

“I’m not talking poorly on the contractors who bid it,” he said. “If it had come in at $500,000, we might have considered it. But when it comes in at almost double that, it’s a nonstarter.”

The project will be paid in part with grant money the township has been able to secure, but the homeowners in Highland Woods will bear most of the cost through individual assessments.

With that being the case, the supervisors and Pitsch concurred that the bids received would place too much of a financial burden on Highland Woods residents.

“We reviewed it line item by line item,” Pitsch said. “Some of the items were priced at what they should be, but others were tripled in price. It just wasn’t affordable.”

The sewage facilities serving Highland Woods were privately owned by the Highland Woods Condominium Association until February 2022.

With the pump malfunctioning and the line needing repair, that’s when the township created the Highland Woods Sewage District and took the facilities over with the intent of repairing and/or replacing them to stay compliant with environmental regulations.

Pitsch said the approach the township officials plan to take to get the project completed will be to break it into individual contracts instead of seeking to hire one of the larger general contracting companies to do all the work.

In addition, Pitsch said instead of doing the sewer line replacement through specialized subsurface methods, the township now will seek to have that done through the open trench excavation method.

He said the idea of multiple contracts and going to the open trench method, hopefully, will make the project more attractive to smaller contractors willing to do it at a lower cost.

“We’re exploring all avenues, for sure,” Pitsch said.