City selects company for water treatment plant rebuild

The city of Lewiston has awarded a $6.7 million contract to Halme Construction of Spokane to begin rebuilding part of the infrastructure that feeds water from the Clearwater River into the town’s water treatment plant.

But municipal officials are still scrambling to find another $8 million to $10 million to complete a second part of the project.

The $6.7 million contract to Halme Construction approved by the Lewiston City Council covers work such as installing an intake pipe and fish screens that would be completed this summer.

Up to this stage, the city has received $7.3 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funneled through the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality as well as about $900,000 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said City Public Works Director Dustin Johnson.

What Halme Construction is doing doesn’t include equipment such as pumps, pump houses and electrical components that would be needed to finish the intake system, Johnson said.

Part of the thinking behind moving forward with only part of the project is that the deadline to spend the ARPA money is the end of 2026, and the city has secured the difficult-to-obtain permits required for doing work in the river, Johnson said.

While the city works on redoing the intake system, Lewiston is using what was supposed to be a temporary intake system.

Up until 1973, the water intake was at the city’s water treatment plant, on the south side of the Clearwater River, downstream from Clearwater Paper, which wasn’t located in Lewiston when the water treatment plant was built before 1900, Johnson said.

“When they put the levee system in (for the lower Snake River dams), they redesigned (a permanent) intake so the intake was going to be upstream from the paper mill,” Johnson said. “And they drilled a temporary one to get it going.”

Since that time, the “permanent” intake has worked for 1½ years, said Lewiston Mayor Dan Johnson, and he maintains the corps needs to finish the project it promised it would provide the city.

The mayor, who spoke at a recent city council meeting, said he’s worked with the corps, communicated with congressional staff and had meetings in Boise seeking solutions.

The corps recognizes the importance of the project to the city of Lewiston, according to a statement it provided the Tribune.

“Funding is being constrained by Congressional appropriations and has historically been limited to significantly smaller amounts,” according to the statement. “The Walla Walla District will continue prioritizing infrastructure projects that align with our authorities and available resources.”

A number of factors are complicating the challenge. The temporary intake is across the river from the mill and on a bend in the river, prone to silting in about every five years, Dustin Johnson said.

The water being pulled into the temporary intake just after the city completed an upgrade to the water treatment plant in 2023 was like liquid sand, Dan Johnson said.

“I don’t know what it’ll do for the motors if it can get through those, but it wasn’t good,” Dan Johnson said.

The initial estimate for the water intake replacement was about $2 million in 2018, but that’s now escalated to in excess of $16 million, Dustin Johnson said.

A concrete and rebar base that had initially been thought to be reusable was found not to be, he said.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, materials that had been $3 per ton are $6 per ton to $9 per ton, Dustin Johnson said.

Originally the city thought it would pay for the permanent intake with money from an Idaho state revolving fund bond approved by the voters about eight years ago, Dustin Johnson said.

But costs for other upgrades that money needed to cover, such as a new well, a modernization of the water treatment plant and a new reservoir near Lewiston’s high school rose, too, he said.

And water from the Clearwater River continues to be important even though the city has seven wells, said Dustin Johnson.

Without water from the Clearwater River, the city doesn’t have enough to meet demand in the summer when water use rises from two million to three million gallons per day to almost nine million gallons per day because of irrigation, Dustin Johnson said.

The mayor has promised to continue to seek a solution.

“We’re going to work tirelessly,” Dan Johnson said. “I know that I will, to see if we can secure funding.”

Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 553-8482.