The bids are in for the Val’s stormwater lift station.

And they’re high.

Really high.

At a special meeting Monday night, the Chesterton Stormwater Management Board voted 3-0 to take those bids under advisement.

The bids:

•$205,888 from Woodruff & Sons Inc. of Michigan City.

•$269,200 from Haase Construction Company Inc. of Calumet City, Ill.

Woodruff’s low bid is roughly 47 percent more than the $140,000 bid only three years ago for the same project. The board rejected that earlier bid because it was too high.

Woodruff’s low bid would also account for nearly a quarter of the proceeds of the $880,000 stormwater bond issued late last year. Town Engineer Mark O’Dell had originally estimated the cost of this project at between $125,00 and $140,000.

It’s unclear at this point why the same project would cost so much more now than it would have in September 2009. Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg told the Chesterton Tribune after the meeting that he and O’Dell will be going through the bids to identify the inflationary items.

The whole idea behind the lift station is to pump stormwater from the alley behind Val’s Famous Pizza & Grinders, located at Broadway and 11th Street. In heavy rains that alley—the lowest point in the Town of Chesterton—tends to flood. The lift station, powered by a 15-horse power pump, would flow the runoff from the alley to a large stormwater sewer line on Lincoln Ave., about 1,100 feet to the south.

The $880,000 bond was issued specifically to address a number of stormwater problems throughout the town, in addition to the alley behind Val’s. Among the projects which the board hopes to finance through the bond: drainage work in the Western Acres subdivision, along 11th Street near Chesterton High School, on Gladys Lane in the Westchester South subdivision, and on the Pope O’Connor Ditch in the area of 1100N; the installation of best management practices at the Crocker compost site; work on ditches and culverts in the Morningside subdivision; closing and piping the open ditch on the north side of West Porter Ave. between 19th and 23rd streets; and the replacement of a stormwater sewer on Taylor Street.

Posted 9/11/2012