Paradise council accepts sewer design report, pivots to local treatment after cost surge

The Paradise Town Council on Wednesday accepted a Basis of Design Report (BODR) for the Paradise Sewer Project and agreed to shift planning away from a full regional connection to the City of Chico toward smaller, locally sited treatment options after engineering estimates showed the regional alternative would be financially infeasible.

Why it matters: The project — long identified by the town as critical to post‑Camp Fire recovery, groundwater protection and housing and commercial redevelopment — faces construction cost estimates well above earlier projections. Council members and consultants said the BODR gives officials technical detail to redesign and scale an approach the town can realistically fund and build.

Mark Maddox, Paradise public works director and town engineer, told the council the work summarized in the BODR shows decades of study but also a stark funding gap. "The proposed rates, loans, and grants amount to a project that is financially too burdensome for the community support, an economically driven benefit," he said. "What that means is that the project cost, if we were to solely rely on rates and loans and grants that were available, that this project does not have a path forward."

The consultants who delivered the BODR said the 10‑month study produced a detailed collection‑system model and defined a baseline regional alternative: a new collection system in Paradise and an 18‑mile export pipeline to Chico's water pollution control plant. Randy Buckman, project manager for the progressive design‑build team, summarized the pace of work: "in a short period of 10 months, we are able to... deliver the BODR."

Key technical findings and near‑term implications -…