City wants project's road problems fixed

The City of Libby will withhold payments to the Cabinet Heights Sewer Project contractor until perceived shortcomings can be corrected, Mayor Doug Roll said.

Roll met Wednesday morning with Rexburg, Idaho-based Edstrom Construction, which began the sewer project last August.

“I told him we would hold a percentage of the next payment,” Roll said. “Depending on how the work goes in the next couple of weeks, we will be holding back some of that until some of the deficiencies can be addressed.”

Edstrom’s contract with the city entailed hooking Cabinet Heights residents to city sewer and then restoring the area to its original condition and repaving roads with a double chip seal.

The chip seal was expected to create a more consistent and higher-quality road than the original surface, but currently the manholes are too high and the transitions to driveways and other roads are not smooth, according to project engineer Ryan Jones.

“The big hot-button issue up there is the road,” said Jones of Morrison-Maierle Inc. “… The road isn’t acceptable right now.”

Most of the roadwork money is due next payout and the city still controls $400,000 of the project funding, Jones said.

The city has tried to address residents’ complaints concerning dusty roads, Roll and Jones pointed out, but only a small amount of water can be utilized while the chip seal is setting.

“There’s going to be some dust,” Jones said. “The catch there is the more you water this road, until it sets up, the more oil you bring to the surface. Basically with more driving and traffic the road is going to set up. It’s not blacktop asphalt, but it won’t look like a gravel road.”

Edstrom’s “substantial completion” deadline is Aug. 4 and is defined in the contract as having all sewer lines online and in full operation. The company can be fined $500 every day that it goes over deadline, in addition to inspection and engineering costs.

“Basically, the next couple weeks they need to get the lift-station up and operational and sewer system complete – the testing is mostly done,” Jones said. “There are a lot of folks to hook up and get online.”

The final completion deadline is Sept. 3, which entails restoring yards and bringing roads up to standard.

“The big thing is the road is not completed,” Jones said. “They have a lot of work to do and limited time to do it.”

In other city news, the Libby City Council this week approved discounting city water users the base water rate for the months of July, August and September in lieu of settlement money the city received from International Paper Inc.