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Council OKs Contract For Wastewater Study
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Escalon City Council members on Monday night unanimously awarded a contract to Pace Advanced Water Engineering out of Fountain Valley for a comprehensive study at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

The goal of the study is multi-faceted, aimed primarily at finding ways to improve the efficiency at the plant and determine if its capacity can be expanded.

The bid price was $72,180 and council members had several pages of detailed ‘scope of work’ information to review provided by the firm prior to making their decision.

“It is a big scope of work,” agreed Escalon City Manager Tammy Alcantor, adding that the firm will look at operations both on the industrial and domestic side.

On the industrial side, the city often receives odor complaints during the height of the canning season and on the domestic side, she said the city struggles to maintain the percolation ponds.

The issues are not new; however, the city does need to address them and is looking for the most efficient and cost-effective way to do that.

A cease and desist order issued by the state back in 2014 still exists, Alcantor said, but the city “did everything the state requested of us at that time” in order to keep the city’s wastewater treatment plant operating.

The scope of work will also include determining if the plant capacity can be expanded and if so, how that can be done, can some of the water be recycled and reused in some capacity and review steps that can be implemented for a more effective operation.

“They’ll evaluate whether we need to put different equipment in, basically evaluating the entire operation of the plant,” Alcantor said.

The contract had come before the council at a previous session but they sent it back seeking more information on the exact work the engineering firm would do; Alcantor said the council vote on Monday night was 5-0 in favor of awarding the contact to the Fountain Valley firm.