Flocculation Basin Design
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:36:13 +0000
Angels Camp may take the next step Tuesday toward creating a 4.5-mile trail that will weave through the city alongside Angels Creek.
A contract for the $103,000 grant-funded design of the trail will go before the Angels Camp City Council on Tuesday.
The council also will consider moving ahead with some needed improvements at the city’s water treatment plant — sans the controversial fourth filter — and hear a mid-year report on the city’s finances.
After sending out 61 requests for proposals, sorting through 12 bids and interviewing four firms, a three-person city committee chose Oakdale-based RRM Design Group as their leading candidate for the trail design job. The firm has done more than 75 trail projects, including stretches in Visalia, San Luis Obispo and Riverside. Their designated principal-in-charge for the project lives in Sonora, according to their proposal.
The firm’s bid came in under the total grant amount of $115,000.
A path for the trail has not yet been determined, but the aim is to keep it as close to Angels Creek as possible.
A later objective is to connect it to New Melones eventually, though the initial phase will not stray from the city’s sphere of influence, said Dave Hanham, planning director.
That limits it to an area of just 3.6 square miles and “as the crow flies” the trail likely will be less than 3.8 miles, he said. On the ground, expect curves.
“There’s a lot of up and down and turns, and all kinds of stuff with the terrain of the land,” he said.
It will likely be paved within the urban areas of the city, but Hanham would like to see a more natural feel in the rural areas. The final decisions will be made during the design process.
Construction could be some time away. Hanham says it is unlikely any sections will be done this year.
“Unless we get a nice big development,” which would provide revenue for the city, he said.
A variety of possible grant sources may be another avenue.
“There might be some ways of getting this thing built without having the developer or the taxpayer paying for it.”
The council also will vote on whether to move forward with a handful of repairs and improvements totaling $360,000 at the city’s water treatment plant.
The leading repair will be a $111,000 refurbishment of a 50-year-old flocculation basin — used to remove sediment from water — whose parts are speckled with rust.
Others include a $61,000 improvement to the area where water first enters the plant and a $17,700 rerouting of piping that currently carries chlorine over operators’ heads — a safety risk in the event of a failed line.
The improvements were originally included in a proposed fourth-filter project for the plant, which was among the options the state mandated the city take in the wake of a slew of capacity violations.
But with the council divided on whether a fourth filter is necessary, and time now run out to build it this year before the high-use summer season, the city’s Infrastructure/Facilities Committee decided it should go ahead independently with the improvements.
“That’s what we felt,” said Mayor Jack Lynch, who sits on the committee. “We need to break them out as a separate thing, rather than say they are part of the fourth filter.”
The council will also hear a report from Melisa Ralston, finance director, on how much the city has earned and spent in the first six months of the fiscal year.
Much of the data is still missing. Due to the timing of when a variety of city revenue sources are released or collected, the city has yet to receive checks from a number of sources.
Sales taxes, property taxes, transient occupancy tax, vehicle in-lieu fees, business licenses, franchise fees and police and fire Proposition 172 fees are all not complete, as some are due later, while some are being held by the state or county.
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- Posted in Tom Bartlett Design
