Cheney to replace water main along North 3rd Street

Residents in and around North 3rd Street between Elm and Ash streets will find travel a bit difficult in the coming weeks as a water main replacement project gets under way.

At its Aug. 13 meeting, the City Council approved a $215,750 contract with Red Diamond Construction of Spokane to upgrade the existing main along North 3rd Street. The contract calls for the project to be completed within 20 days of commencing, and Public Works Director Todd Ableman hopes that means the main is replaced and roadway repaired by the end of October.

“We are scheduling a construction meeting within the next couple of weeks and should have an idea when the contractor will start,” Ableman said in an Aug. 21 email.

Red Diamond was the lowest of five contractors bidding on the project, which is funded entirely by the Community Development Block Grant program. Bids ranged from Red Diamond’s amount to $347,800 from DW Excavating, with the average bid price totaling $289,967 and an engineering estimate of $250,090.

Councilman Paul Schmidt asked Ableman at the Aug. 13 council meeting if he had any concerns about the spreads in bid amounts. Ableman said he didn’t, adding that Red Diamond’s price was likely attributable to their knowledge of the city’s water system.

Red Diamond was the contractor hired to repair leaks at eight different locations in Cheney this past winter that caused the city’s pumps to generate over 350 gallons per minute more than their typical winter average of 700 gpm. Half of the leaks, accounting for over 300 gpm, were north of Elm Street and east of North 5th Street, including North 3rd and Oakland Street.

The current North 3rd Street project between Elm and Ash calls for removing about 720 lineal feet of four-inch wrapped steel main and replacing it with eight-inch PVC main piping. Fourteen residential one-inch service lines will also be replaced, which Ableman said will cause disruptions in water service for the homeowners.

Red Diamond will remove the asphalt concrete pavement and replace it once the water main work is finished. They will also remove and replace “unsuitable materials” in the process of filling in after the work at a cost of $40,000.

“When excavating to install the new main, sometimes the material is unsuitable to go back into the trench,” Ableman said. “The cost is for the contractor to haul off and dispose of the unsuitable material and to replace it with suitable material.”

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].