City water coming to west Sparta and Lakewood

Council unanimously approved the lowest bidder, Excavation Point, to construct water lines looping its Sparta Road and Lakewood Road water lines, as a first phase of the city's plans for that general area.

Sebring qualified for a $2.068 million 2009 American Recovery Rehabilitation Act drinking water state revolving fund stimulus grant to construct its new water lines.

Winter Haven-based Envisors LLC applied for the grant on behalf of and in conjunction with the city.

Excavation Point was the project low bidder at slightly more than $950,000.

Before any construction can begin the project must go through an approval process by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said Roger Homann, project manager for Envisors LLC.

Construction on the project is expected to begin some time in December, Homann said Thursday. Once construction begins, Excavation Point will have 150 days to finish, he said.

Due to a procedural error by Envisors in the bidding process, the city council had to waive its two-bid policy in order to award the bid to Excavation Point, which came in about $20,000 below the next lowest bidder.

When Envisors put the item out to bid, it followed the FDEP guidelines and only put it out to bid a single time. The error was noted and a second bid was put out, to which Excavation Point responded.

However, due to time restrictions in the grant, the city could not reject all bids and rebid the project.

City Utilities staff is preparing orders for construction materials right now, said Marty Roepstorff, utilities director, on Thursday.

As had been previously reported, only 10 cities statewide were awarded the monies. Sebring was ranked fifth and received more money than any other Florida city.

This will take the city's system where it ends on Sparta near Bassage Road and will tie in the system where it ends at Cracker Trail (Elementary School). Lakewood Road is parallel to Sparta Road, and runs east and west, just west of U.S 27 in Sebring.

Looping the system is a good thing because when a waterline ends in a dead end, an automatic flush valve must flush out the system periodically so that the water does not stagnate. This process wastes water, said Bob Hoffman, assistant city administrator, in a prior report.

This project also will allow people on well water to connect into the system, he added.

The city also received two separate grants from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to pay for all aspects of the project, including planning, administration and design.

The total estimated cost for the project was projected at $2.9 million, according to one document provided by the city.

All of the other cities had to pay out-of-pocket expenses to get their projects to "shovel-ready" status, the city's Sept. 1 agenda item stated. In addition to the grant, there is also a $365,000 low-interest loan available.

The city makes money by attracting new potable water customers. The city won't know how many new water customers it will get until those homes actually are tied in, Roepstorff said Monday.

The cost for a residential customer to tie in to a three-quarter inch meter is about $965, he said.

The city is in the process of preparing a plan to run water mains in the area of 13th Avenue into the Lake Haven Estates subdivision and portions of Orange Blossom. Those routes are yet to be determined, said Roepsdorff.

It could bring water to possibly more than 200 homes, although he didn't want to get anyone's hopes up just yet.

It all depends on the availability of more government stimulus money in the near future.

"We're definitely qualified for it," he said. "But it depends on those monies, when we go to Phase II."