Erie moves ahead with design for North Water Treatment Facility; council approves design contract

Erie Town Council on April 8 voted to award the final-design contract for the proposed North Water Treatment Facility to Burns & McDonnell and discussed the project’s technical, schedule and budget risks in a lengthy presentation and council Q&A.

Town manager Malcolm Fleming introduced the item and said the Phase 1 plant is intended to add redundancy and capacity on Erie’s north side. Burns & McDonnell consultant Brett Pugh walked council through treatment needs, technology choices and phasing: Phase 1 targets roughly 6.6 million gallons per day (MGD) of new capacity that, combined with the existing southern plant (~17 MGD on paper), would be scalable with later phases as population grows. Pugh said the plant will rely on reverse osmosis to treat high total dissolved solids (TDS) in Boulder Creek source water (Boulder Creek averages around 500 mg/L TDS and ranges 200–900 mg/L), which creates a concentrated brine stream requiring disposal. Consultants described deep-well (Class I) injection as the preferred disposal path; permitting for such wells typically involves EPA review and can take roughly two years from application to an operational test well.

Pugh also described an associated raw-water reservoir concept (up to 700 acre-feet conceptual; the current scope advances the reservoir to 30% design while negotiations with upstream partners continue) that would provide operational flexibility and up to about 30 days of storage in certain scenarios. The team emphasized pilot testing: the project will rent pilot-scale reverse osmosis equipment this summer to test performance against the worst seasonal water quality.

On costs, the presentation included early-order-of-magnitude estimates: a project-level engineering-level estimate (class 5) with high contingency and an overall project-level figure that consultants described as currently on the order of $35 million (noted as an early-stage estimate with large contingency). The design contract before council was roughly $7.0 million for final design with a $600,000 contingency (council discussion referenced a total of about $7.6 million of design authorization, funded from the 2024 budget and rolled into 2025). Staff recommended a construction-manager-at-risk delivery method to bring a contractor on early for pricing and early procurement of expensive long-lead items.

Councilors probed the project’s technical tradeoffs: whether existing plant upgrades would be required (consultants said existing southern plant is designed for its supply and that the North plant is intended to be additive), reverse-osmosis recovery and concentrate volumes (consultants discussed multi-stage RO and recovery targets and said high recoveries—approaching 90%+ with staged systems—are possible but affect concentrate handling), alternatives to deep-well injection (evaporation considered but judged impractical here), and contingency strategies if EPA injection permits take longer than expected (multiple wells, staged permitting, and possible additional concentrate management strategies). Several councilors pressed staff on timing risks and the benefit of early procurement in the face of tariff-driven material-price uncertainty.

After questions and discussion, council moved, seconded and approved the design award and related resolution. A roll-call vote recorded council members present as voting in favor. Staff said the pilot equipment must be ordered and on site this summer to capture a poor-water-quality testing window; the design milestone at 30% and contractor onboarding by late summer were set as target schedule points.