Milton council approves eastern access route, authorizes land swap and terminates Gator Boring contract in wastewater project

Milton — The Milton City Council on Sept. 25 approved directing designers to pursue an eastern access route and a proposed land swap to serve the city’s new wastewater treatment plant and effluent disposal system, and unanimously voted to terminate the city’s contract with contractor Gator Boring for convenience, council members said at a special called meeting.

The actions followed a presentation from Rick Delp, the project engineer working with consultant firm BDI, who updated the council on permitting progress and construction-routing options. Delp said the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) returned requests for additional information that delayed the 60% design submittal by a few weeks but did not change the March final delivery date in the design contract. “We are on target for that,” Delp said.

Why it matters: The access-route decision and contractor termination are intended to reduce construction complexity and lower the overall project cost. Delp said rerouting the access and avoiding a long access road could save “as much as 5 or $6,000,000” compared with the originally planned 2.5-mile access, and the design team believes adjustments made during permitting downtime could reduce the overall cost estimate by “at least $10,000,000.” Those savings and the reuse of materials already purchased were cited by staff as reasons to reconfigure the work and close out the existing contractor agreement.

Permitting and schedule: Delp summarized the DEP permitting timeline and recent exchanges. The city submitted separate DEP applications for the treatment plant and for the effluent disposal (spray-field) system on May 23. DEP issued Requests for Additional Information (RAIs) on June 20 (plant) and June 13 (effluent disposal); the project team returned responses on Sept. 12 for the effluent disposal RAI and within the DEP timeframes…