Cowlitz County staff seek commissioner signature on solid-waste grant amendment, recommend landfill monitoring contracts and award low bid for Tower Road water‑

Public Works staff told the Cowlitz County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday that they will ask the board to allow a commissioner to sign a Local Solid Waste Financial Assistance (LSWIFA) grant amendment and then place the item on next week’s consent agenda.

Savannah Clement, Public Services, said the two‑year LSWIFA award runs July to June and that the state awards the county $484,000 on a biannual basis; staff said the county is reimbursed about $363,000 over the two‑year cycle. Clement said staff are adjusting how those dollars are allocated among the household hazardous waste (MRW) facility, the county’s rural recycling program and a small share for homeless encampment cleanup at Camp Hope, amounting to a net reallocation of about $98,100 across the three uses with no change to the overall award.

The amendment request will ask the board to authorize a commissioner to sign the paperwork before the item appears on the consent agenda.

Why it matters: the LSWIFA funds pay for the county’s household hazardous‑waste collection and rural recycling efforts; small changes in the allocation affect how much the county assigns to MRW operations, recycling and encampment cleanup.

Public Works also briefed the board on multiple procurement and contract actions. County Engineer Susan Eugenis reviewed a recommended low bid for the Tower Road water main and the Juanita Way booster pump station project. Eugenis said 11 bidders responded and the apparent low bidder, ROCE, submitted a bid of $1,549,631.76; the second‑lowest bid was about $5,000 higher. Eugenis said ROCE’s paperwork checked out and there were no debarments on record.

Eugenis presented two professional/service agreements with PBS for environmental monitoring at county landfills. The first contract covers surface emissions monitoring at the headquarters landfill and the Tenet Way landfill, structured as a task‑order contract not to exceed $150,000 to develop monitoring plans and perform quarterly sampling. The second is a fixed‑fee contract for groundwater and surface‑water sampling and reporting, a little over $161,000 for quarterly sampling and an annual report. "For the surface emissions, it's a not to exceed $150,000," Eugenis said. "For the groundwater, it's also quarterly" and the fixed fee covers the sampling and reporting schedule.

Eugenis described the surface emissions work as a grid‑pattern survey of the landfill face, noting that new drone‑mounted samplers are becoming available but have not yet been fully approved by Ecology and Clean Air. She said task orders will be negotiated on hours and unit rates after the plan phase; if a later task order would exceed the approved not‑to‑exceed amount, staff would return to the board for approval.

The board also received an update on an emergency contract and repair on International Way. Eugenis said crews installed bypass pumps, located a 15‑inch diameter pipe with a hole caused by a boring, and completed a field repair and cleanup; a camera run was used to inspect the full 450‑foot manhole‑to‑manhole run. "The hole is filled. Cobatch is on its way. The intent is to be off‑site by end of work today," she said. Eugenis told the board the incident was caused by a boring that struck the top of the pipe.

Other routine items previewed for the consent agenda included a recorded possession and use agreement for the Shadow Mountain Reservoir project, annual Title VI reports to Washington State Department of Transportation that document nondiscrimination and translation outreach, and a temporary construction easement request for the Dike Road reconstruction project (the easement is with the Waldo property at 1299 Dike Road).

Ending: Staff said the consent items will be presented next week after the commissioner signs the paperwork where requested. The board did not take a recorded formal vote on these items during the briefing; staff indicated they will return with task orders or amendments if costs exceed the contract limits discussed.