Cookeville City Council will consider awarding an estimated $1.8 million bid on Thursday for a generator at the expanded water treatment plant.
Cookeville Water and Sewer Director Barry Turner said the city will use part of a $4 million grant to pay for the installation. Turner said the city has already bid out several components of the project.
“It’s in line with what we were expecting because we estimated this total project to be about $4 million,” Turner said. “And I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but based on the price that we have paid for the generator, the price that we paid for the switch gear, and now this price, we are gonna be a little under budget.”
Turner said the generator would not be able to supply enough power to treat water at full capacity in the case of an outage. The city could treat an estimated 7.5 million gallons a day. Turner said the generator will be a big win for the water treatment plant, as the plant has needed a generator for several years.
“Just a few years ago, we came very close to running out of water for the city,” Turner said. “A tree fell on the line. We had city people down there. We had Upper Cumberland Electric down there, and trying to get service restored. We came within a few hours of running out of water at the dam.”
Turner said part of the installation is trenching water lines to prevent a tree from disrupting the line again. Turner said there are still some timeline details that need to be worked out before starting the project, should the council approve the bid.
“We still need to look at a couple of those components that we have already ordered and see exactly when they will be delivered,” Turner said. “This should get everything under this $1.8 million, should be in place sitting there waiting on cause this includes like pouring a concrete pad for the generator to sit on. We hope to get that pad poured before the generator arrives.”
Turner said the project only received the lone bid from W & O Construction Inc.
