City of Newton
NEWTON, Kan. — At Tuesday night’s meeting, the Newton City Commission received an update on the First Street water tank project and approved an amended low-interest loan agreement with the State to account for increased costs.
The existing water tank stores all of Newton’s drinking water before it is pumped to the City’s four elevated water towers. The 3.8 million-gallon tank, which was built in 1939, is now severely deteriorated and must be replaced. The plan is to build one new 1.9 million-gallon tank before demolishing the existing tank and replacing it with a second 1.9 million-gallon tank. This will allow in the future for one tank to be taken down for maintenance and still leave the community with a steady water supply.
Construction on the first tank began in May 2022. The contractor, Preload LLC, was able to remove material and stabilize the base for the tank footings, and testing began on the soils. Although this site had been previously cleaned up by BNSF, as documented by the Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), contaminated soils were found. KDHE stopped the project to determine the extent of the contamination and how the project could proceed. After much review of data, sampling, and design plans, the State has now approved the project moving forward with a few changes to the pipeline plans.
Because the project has sat idle for over 10 months, material and labor costs have increased, causing a change order of about $670,000. The contaminated soil is considered special waste, which must be hauled off-site to an approved landfill, causing a change order of about $900,000.
The State agreed to add the extra costs to the existing loan at its very low interest rate. The new loan amount is $8,347,473 through the Kansas Public Water Supply Loan Fund at a gross interest rate of 1.26% per year.
Construction is expected to resume in September, according to Preload’s current schedule.
CLICK HERE to download the Hutch Post mobile app.
CLICK HERE to sign up for the daily Hutch Post email news update.