All Local, All The Time
All Local, All The Time
Niwot Sanitation District board member Dick Piland holds one of the commemorative shovels used to break ground for the district's new wastewater treatment facility.
Niwot Sanitation District directors (l to r) Dick Piland, Jennifer Uhland, Jim Jones, Randy Lutz, and Jan Swanson, along with District Manager Dave Lewis of Direct Discharge Consulting, LLC, break ground on the new wastewater treatment facility.
Representatives of the Niwot Sanitation District are joined by staff of contractor Rice Lake West and design consultant JVA Consulting Engineers at the groundbreaking ceremony for the upgraded water treatment facility May 13.
A sign at the site of the new sanitation facility shows the three buildings and two structures which will be constructed as part of the $27M project.
Niwot Sanitation board members and staff donned hardhats to break ground on a project to bring needed upgrades to the water treatment facility just northwest of 95th Street and Niwot Road on May 13.
The project will upgrade the facilities, first built in 1967, to comply with current federal regulations governing wastewater discharge. The deadline for compliance is 2026, a date the District should be able to meet.
Board members Jim Jones, Randy Lutz, Jan Swanson, Dick Piland and Jennifer Uhland were joined by Office Manager Michele Funk and District Manager Dave Lewis of Direct Discharge Consulting, LLC, for the groundbreaking ceremony. Lewis is also serving as the owner's representative for the construction project.
Also in attendance were Dustin Foss of Rice Lake West, the contractor for the project, and Senior Engineer Melissa Whitmore and Vice-President Andrew Sparn of JVA Consulting Engineers, which handled the design of the facility.
Sparn said the construction documents for the design-build project were well over 90% complete and construction was ready to begin. "We have all the permits we need," he said. Chris Miller, also with Rice Lake West, said, "We're ready to get this kicked off."
The project is expected to take two years to complete, and will include three new buildings with two additional structures and what Miller described as "a lot of underground piping."
Jones, president of the District, said a lift station currently located near Dry Creek has been determined to be in the floodplain according to new mapping, and as a result, will have to be relocated. Repairs to the current equipment are becoming more difficult to complete due to the age of the system. Piland noted, "Old equipment doesn't last forever, and will have to be replaced eventually."
The project has long been in the works, and the District had created a reserve fund of over $9M before the pandemic in 2020, with the expectation that the fund would cover most of the project cost. But the perfect storm of rising interest rates, limited funding options, and skyrocketing construction costs caused the board of directors to increase rates by 2.7 times to be able to fund the $27M project.
With approximately 2500 taps but little to no growth expected in the area, the District was able to avoid seeking approval of a mill levy for property taxes by increasing the rates to existing customers, but rates rose from roughly $35 per month to approximately $99 per month.
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