MVSD Bid openings for work postponed

The deadline for bids was extended by a little more than a week.
By SHERRI L. SHAULIS
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
MINERAL RIDGE -- Bid openings for companies interested in performing work on the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District's filtration system have been postponed.
Tom Holloway, the MVSD's chief engineer, said questions from bidders prompted officials to delay the process by a little more than a week. Bids now will be opened at 2 p.m. next Thursday at the MVSD offices, located off Salt Springs Road.
"We issued an addendum to the original bid packages, so we decided to push everything back a week," he said.
Holloway said some of the companies interested in bidding on all or portions of the work had questions about drawings and some interpretations of specifications, so the addendum was drafted and sent to all interested companies by CT Consultants Inc. in Willoughby, the company handling the bidding process for the MVSD.
Craig Juday, project manager with CT Consultants, said roughly 20 companies have requested information packets about the work to be done.
To award five contracts
MVSD officials plan to award five separate contracts for the work, which covers everything from repairing the building that houses the filters, to upgrading the heating and air conditioning systems to upgrading, repairing and replacing the filters and their electrical controls.
All of the construction is estimated to total roughly $6.8 million. That figure is on top of the $400,000 already spent on the project's design work.
MVSD's board of directors agreed earlier this year to apply for a state loan through the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to cover most of the costs.
The filters are used to sift dirt and sand from the water taken out the Meander Reservoir before it's treated and sold wholesale to more than 300,000 customers by Niles and Youngstown, MVSD's member cities.
The improvements and upgrades to the filters originally started in the mid-1990s, but all work was suspended when the state conducted a special audit of the district. Discussions about continuing the needed repairs resumed almost two years ago.
slshaulis@vindy.com