By Jessica Keller
The Courier-Herald
What could have been a snag in the construction of Buckley's multi-use skate park turned out to be just a small bump in the road.
At the Aug. 24 City Council meeting, City Administrator Dave Schmidt told the council even though the city received bid proposals from construction companies, the project might be delayed because of contaminated soil.
The city had received a tip in mid-August stating the soil may be contaminated, and when city workers examined the site and took soil samples, they found what appeared to be a vein of some sort of petroleum product, which turned out to be gasoline. The vein of contaminated soil is 6 to 8 feet wide and comes within the proposed storm drainage site of the multi-use skateboard park.
Schmidt said last week while the samples of the soil showed the contamination to be above the threshold of parts per billion allowed by the Department of Ecology, the vein of soil is not as extensive as originally thought, and less than 100 yards has to be removed.
He said the quantity is not large enough to require the city to go out for a separate contract for its removal and, ideally, the city can add a change order to the current contract to have it removed.
The City Council agreed in late August to award the contract bid to GenCon Pacific for the amount of $354,332.50, which is a little more than $18,000 less than the original engineering estimate. The preliminary engineering estimate for the overall project was $372,679. The bid, however, was not to be formally executed until the city learned what needed to be done about the contaminated soil.
Because that contract has not been formally executed, Schmidt said the city was kind of in a "sticky situation" - he is not sure what the additional cost will be and the city hasn't spoken to GenCon yet about what the company might charge for the additional work.
The City Council was supposed to consider the options on how to remove the contaminated soil at last night's meeting.
Jessica Keller can be reached at jkeller@courierherald.com.
