Leamington's big sewer line project on Bevel Line Rd. and Point Pelee Dr. has hit a major snag. The cost of the project has gone way up.
The town hired Dillon Consulting to study soil conditions and cost the project, and the estimate came back at around $8-million. As a result, the municipality applied for federal and provincial grants and was awarded a total of $4-million in funding.
Now, the cost has gone up to $11.7-million.
"The problem is with phase three and phase four. The three bidding firms went and did their own test holes, and dug deeper, and looked further into it before they bid on the project," says Mayor John Paterson. "They found the unstable soil conditions, the high water tables and all the other issues that they're going to have to deal with in that area. They're saying in order for us to do this, these costs are going to be incurred."
That means the residents living along Bevel Line Rd. and Point Pelee Dr. will have to pay an extra $7,000. They anticipated their share of the cost would run around $10,000 each.
Paterson says it is not Dillon's fault.
"Dillon did its job in the environmental assessment, and what the put forward were simply estimates of what they felt the project would cost," he says. "Now we're getting right down into the nuts and bolts, and we're getting into the truer costs."
At a special town council meeting Wednesday afternoon, councillors are expected to award the winning bid for phase three and four of the project. Phase two got underway last summer, ahead of phase one.
Paterson anticipates J&J LePera will get the contract since its bid is the lowest at $6.2-million, but there is a risk council will decide to hold off on the work because of the cost overrun. If that happens, Paterson says the town could lose its federal funding, and residents would be on the hook for the entire cost.
"There's a project deadline. There are commitments made to the province and the feds," says Paterson. "We can't afford not to do this. We are polluting the lake."
The project, considered the largest ever undertaken in the Municipality of Leamington, was announced with much fanfare in June 2015 and is expected to be complete in the summer of 2018.
