Redevelopment authority approves $36,000 contract amendment to advance City Pier cathodic protection bids

The Fall River Redevelopment Authority on an open-session vote approved Amendment No. 1 to the agreement with Foth Infrastructure and Environment LLC, authorizing up to $36,000 in time-and-materials support for bid support and construction management of a cathodic-protection project at City Pier.

The authority’s project manager, Karen Martin, told the board that the bid package will be posted on COMMBUYS and published in the Central Register with the package available April 2, a mandatory on-site pre-bid April 9 and bids due April 17. Martin said the base design calls for 109 impressed-current anodes along the pier’s sheet piling to reduce corrosion and extend the life of the pier’s steel pilings.

“We are getting into the thick of it with cathodic protection,” Martin said, describing the anodes as roughly 5 inches by 5 inches by 3 feet, weighing about 90 pounds each, and installed about a foot above the underwater ground. She said the base bid includes continuity/knuckle welds, tab welding, epoxy protection on welds and testing. The engineered system is expected to provide about 20 years of protection, she said.

Martin described two priced alternates the authority will solicit: a square-foot unit-price epoxy coating for priority southern-exposure areas above mean low water, and a splash-zone/intertidal “mastic” epoxy for the zone repeatedly wetted by tides. She said alternates were added because preliminary pricing…