Municipal authority board members in Washington Township in Fayette County will again seek bids for two of eight contracts for the construction of a sanitary sewer system after contractors said they could no longer honor the bids.
Contractors hired in January to undertake the $21.5 million project agreed not to raise their prices as the authority board searched for funding to reduce tap-in fees.
But two contractors that bid $849,000 for the construction of three pump stations and $664,496 for the electrical work in the buildings said they are no longer able to do the work for that price.
During a board meeting Tuesday, engineer Dave Kerchner, of Indianola-based Bankson Engineers, advised the board to advertise for bids again because the second-highest bids for those two contracts are a combined $145,000 more.
Bankson Engineers representative Judy Spray said she had the Dec. 9 closing date for a $9.8 million loan for the project provided by the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority rescheduled for Jan. 13, mainly because the township supervisors have yet to guarantee financing for the project and because the two contracts have to be rebid.
PennVEST provided a $1.2 million grant for the project.
The board also has taken out a $5.4 million, low-interest loan from the Rural Utilities Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The board had to designate that different areas in the project are covered by each loan.
The PennVEST loan will pay for work in Brownstown, Fairhope and Naomi and for construction of the pump stations.
That work is first on the construction schedule.
Construction in Lynnwood, Washington Heights and Arnold City will be covered by the RUS loan.
Spray said rebidding the two contracts should take about a month, so the construction schedule will not be delayed.
The project should take 12 to 18 months to complete, she said.
On July 14, the Commonwealth Financing Authority approved a $950,000 H20 PA grant for the project.
The board requested $7.5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture program, which will distribute $800 million over 10 years for water projects.
Township officials learned in September that Congressman John Murtha secured a $2 million grant through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Murtha previously helped provide a $1 million grant for the project from the same source.
The most recent grant enabled the authority board to reduce tap-in fees to $625 per homeowner.
The tap-in fee was originally more than $5,000.
