ALLENTOWN – During a special meeting on May 31, members of the Allentown Borough Council voted to reject a pair of bids that had been submitted by companies seeking a contract to upgrade Allentown’s waste water treatment plant.
Municipal Clerk Laurie Gavin reported the council’s action on June 1. She said after the governing body rejected the bids for work on the treatment plant, council members authorized the Roberts Engineering Group to move forward with designing a package plant. She said council members rescinded the remainder of the construction administration costs for the previous project.
Borough Engineer Carmela Roberts said a package plant “is simply a design of new treatment units that have a small footprint with high intensity treatment. They can all be placed in a small area or not, depending on the available space. The Allentown treatment plant has many existing treatment units and our work will include determining the best location for the new units, to take advantage of the space, to not interfere with the existing treatment, and to provide a low cost.”
Mayor Greg Westfall said the bids that were rejected exceeded the engineer’s original estimate for the treatment plant.
In 2017, the council adopted an ordinance appropriating $3.03 million for significant upgrades at the waste water treatment plant and authorizing the issuance of bonds in that amount to finance the project.
In April, the council authorized the Roberts Engineering Group to advertise the project and seek bids from companies that wanted to do the work.
Westfall said representatives of more than a dozen companies expressed interest in the project and secured bid information packages, but in the end only two bids were received.
The waste water treatment plant is off Breza Road. Officials have said one issue to be addressed by the upgrades is a situation in which the level of ammonia is over the limit set by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for discharge into Doctors Creek. Allentown has been fined more than $150,000 as a result of that violation.
The improvements will bring the water being discharged from the plant into compliance with DEP standards, officials have said.
Roberts has said Allentown expects to receive funding in the form of a loan from the New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust (NJEIT). The interest rate is in the range of about 1 percent, she said.
Councilman Rob Schmitt has said the bond issue will provide the funding Allentown officials will use to pay back the NJEIT loan over several decades.
Westfall has said Allentown’s waste water treatment plant was built in 1968 and upgraded in the early 1990s. He said the plant “has not been and is currently not meeting DEP standards for several water quality parameters.”
