Portsmouth water project bid $17M more than expected: What will city do now?

PORTSMOUTH — City officials are weighing how to move forward after the one bid they received for the Little Bay water main project came in more than $17 million higher than what they anticipated, according to city documents.

The one company to bid on the project, Ballard Marine Construction LLC out of Washington State, bid $25.9 million.

“Our latest engineering estimate prior to the bid was $8.8 million,” according to the city’s Portsmouth and Pease Drinking Water Status report for 2023’s third quarter, which Brian Goetz, the city's deputy public works director, pointed out Monday.

The city rejected the bid it received in August.

The long-planned project calls for the “design and construction” of a new 24-inch water transmission main that will run “beneath Little Bay” to replace existing mains that were built in the 1950s.

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“Due to the importance of this water main, this project is necessary to ensure water is continuously supplied from Madbury to Portsmouth and service is not disrupted,” according to the Department of Public Works’ website page on the project.

Majority of Portsmouth’s water supply comes from Madbury

Al Pratt, the city's water resources manager, said the majority of supply for Portsmouth’s water system comes from the Bellamy Reservoir in Madbury, along with four groundwater wells there, and runs through the existing water lines underneath Little Bay, ultimately connecting to Newington and Portsmouth.

He called the water lines an “incredibly critical infrastructure for the city,” but inspections done in 2016 found the pipes had become “very downgraded” and the valves weren’t working, Pratt told the City Council in November 2022.

Reviewing options for the project after $25.9M bid

Since rejecting the one bid for the project, city public works staff are “currently reviewing all of our options, including re-bidding the project earlier next year.”

“We also are working to split the project up into two phases, one that will include replacing the existing valves (that no longer work) on the two water lines that run under the bay to provide the ability to shut down the mains should one of them start leaking,” states the Portsmouth and Pease Drinking Water Status report for 2023’s third quarter.

Staff have not yet settled on an option and don't know much the project ultimately will cost.

During an interview Monday, Goetz said the city’s existing infrastructure under Little Bay “has been in the water for 60 years. That’s why we’re putting the new water line in."

Portsmouth officials say project is 'not an emergency'

The city’s water system allows staff “to keep track of things by the hour, by the minute,” he said, and stated “right now we don’t have any leaks.”

Department of Public Works Director Peter Rice said the condition of the existing water lines under Little Bay “is not an emergency.”

“Running a system like this, you have to plan ahead,” Rice said.

That way, Rice said, you can “address it before it becomes an emergency.”

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Goetz stated the construction project is “very complicated” and has to be done while protecting “water quality” in a “very tidal area.”

“Construction there is not easy. The existing water lines have to be kept in service,” he said.

Goetz noted that “one of the critical things that’s been said all along is the line that goes down into the bay is in good condition,” but it then “splits into two pipes that goes under the bay.”

The valves for those pipes are degraded, he said.

Plans for water line can pivot

The extra time will allow the city public works staff to “repackage the project,” Rice said, or do it in phases.

“It’s not lost money,” Rice said.

He stressed the city is “fortunate to have professional staff that plans ahead and when something like this happens, we have the ability to pivot” and come up with other options.

In terms of how high the bid came in, Goetz noted that something similar happened recently with the General Sullivan bridge.

Plans to remove and replace the bridge in Dover with a new bridge for bicyclists and pedestrians has stalled, at least for now, after the state rejected the one bid it received for the project.

The New Hampshire Department of Transportation opted not to award an $82.2 million bid to Reed & Reed of Woolwich, Maine to remove the bridge superstructure and replace it with a bicyclist and pedestrian connection. The department's estimate at the time of the bid for the project cost was just under $45.6 million.

“We have a major water main project here,” Goetz said.

Mayor Deaglan McEachern acknowledged the bid for the water main project “came in significantly over” what the city expected.

But he too stressed the city is “looking at a couple of different options.”

“I don’t think we know just yet what we’re going to do,” he said Monday.

He stressed while the project is “a high priority, it’s not an emergency. I’m fully confident we will address this. Clean drinking water is probably one of the highest priorities that any government has."

City staff had hoped to start the project at the end of 2023 and complete it in 2024, according to the city project page.

The existing water transmission main was installed by the Army Corps of Engineers for the Air Force in 1953 and it was later transferred — along with a 40-foot easement — to the city of Portsmouth.

It crosses many properties until it gets to Little Bay, where it becomes two 20-inch water mains that run on the bottom of the bay, he said.

“There are valves on each of these cast iron pipes (that run under the surface of the bay) with the intention when this was built if something happened to one of those pipes they could shut it off and still have the redundancy to run water through the other pipe,” he said.

Rice confirmed the city reached an agreement with Durham private property owners to get necessary easements to work on the project.

In November 2022, the council took an initial step to try to secure the easements by eminent domain, but that ended up not being necessary, he and Goetz said.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth gets bid $17M higher than expected for water main project