Plans to replace Pleasant Acre’s aging sewer and water infrastructure will officially move forward after the Starkville Board of Aldermen approved the lowest bid for contract costs Tuesday night.
Aldermen accepted the $981,000 bid from 4-D Construction in Louisville, Mississippi, and the project will involve replacing the water and sewer infrastructure of about 100 homes in the Pleasant Acres subdivision.
The plans progressed after Ward 4 Alderman Jason Walker asked to move the item to the consent agenda Tuesday night, which went uncontested. Pleasant Acres is within Walker’s ward.
“I’m very excited that the board approved the construction bid and that we’re about to start construction,” Walker said. “Hopefully by the beginning of the spring this project will be close to completion.”
Starkville Utilities General Manager Terry Kemp said that although the price for the contract labor is higher than anticipated, he thinks the price is fair.
“Very early in the process, we came up with some rough estimates based on limited information for field work and we were thinking with contingencies it was going to be somewhere around $800,000,” Kemp said. “So this is higher than that, but we’ve spent the last two weeks— since we actually got the bids in— going line by line to really identify what the cost should be, and we feel very comfortable that this number is a good one.”
Kemp also said there is potential to lower the price in the future.
Kemp said the next immediate step will be meeting with the contractors over the next few weeks to devise a plan to move forward. Once those plans are established, the contract requires the construction to be completed within 180 days.
“After tonight, we’ll start working with the contractor to develop necessary contracts and bonds and stuff like that they’ll have to provide,” Kemp said. “We hope that process will only take a matter of weeks, so as soon as we finish that, it’ll take within 180 days to complete the project— Depending on weather, a lot depends on weather.”
Kemp said Starkville Utilities and 4-D Construction are eager to get the project going.
“I know the contractor is eager to get started, and we are too, so I think we’re going to move as fast as we can,” Kemp said.
With more replacements in Starkville’s future, the infrastructure replacements will come to pleasant Acres first due to infrastructure age and issues in the neighborhood.
“Pleasant Acres was identified as a target because of the age and because of the repetitive number of failures and calls that we’ve gotten, so it was high on the list,” Kemp said.
“It’s one of the older neighborhoods in Starkville,” Kemp added. “We have been experiencing an increased number of problems, both water and sewer and so we took this opportunity to take a step back and look at a different approach.”
Kemp said a replacement approach to the infrastructure was decided over a repair approach.
“We’ve taken a deeper dive into it to make the system not only fit our needs but future needs,” Kemp said. “And that’s the approach the board wanted go down.”
Starkville Utilities plans to meet a second time with its customers in Pleasant Acres to keep the residents up to date with the plans.
“Within the near future, we will be getting with the neighborhood to have a follow-up meeting,” Kemp said. “We have a network set up with most of the customers within Pleasant Acres because we want to keep them actively involved. This next meeting will be kind of a final review before construction starts and we will answer questions.”
Kemp said the meeting will take place within the next few weeks, but a day and location have not been established. Kemp believes the active communication with residents is an important part of the process.
“That’s what it’s going to take is us all communicating, working together because it’s going to be messy, but I think in the end, the results will really bene t everybody,” Kemp said.
After the Pleasant Acres replacement, next on the list for infrastructure replacement is Green Oaks, then Rolling Hills. Kemp said Starkville Utilities has already met with Green Oaks customers.
“We’ve met out there and they’re very excited and looking forward to us getting over there,” Kemp said. “That’s a much larger area. It’s probably about four times the size of this, so we’ll break it into groups.”
Although the replacement tasks ahead will require major efforts, Kemp said the improvements are a necessity for Starkville’s infrastructure.
“It’s a lot of work over the next 10 years or so, but if you own it, you need to maintain it and keep it up,” Kemp said. “I compliment the board for taking action to not wait until we have a major failure. It gives us a little time to make major improvements before we have real problems.”
Walker said he thinks the Pleasant Acres residents are ready for the changes, despite initial apprehension.
“I think from the public meeting we had early on people were a little apprehensive but I think also very excited,” Walker said. “Knowing that there’s going to be a little bit of a transition and some growing pains, but I think they’re all excited they’re going to have fewer sewer and water problems in their neighborhood.”
Walker said taking the proper steps to acknowledge Starkville’s infrastructure issues is important.
“I think it’s important to show the citizens that this board and the city understands we have real infrastructure issues,” Walker said. “I believe this is a good opportunity for us to drastically improve the infrastructure in a subdivision— also with the sense that we’re going to continue to do that in other subdivisions once we get started.”
Mayor Lynn Spruill said she is also excited to move forward with the utilities project.
“It is one of those things that was floated into a discussion and suddenly it became real,” Spruill said. “Having it become real is the perfect thing for us to do as we move forward— and I think this is a dynamic way for the city to move forward.”