Lewiston council OKs downtown water study

Lewiston’s Public Works director issued a mea culpa to the city council Monday night over an error in a previously approved contract to scope out how much water work can be done downtown with federal funds, but the council unanimously reapproved the contract.

Dustin Johnson said the previous city council gave the go-ahead in December to pay Horrocks Engineers $70,000 to perform the scoping study this year. But the subsequent error in the contract did give Johnson the opportunity to explain the necessity for the work to new Mayor Dan Johnson and the city council, which has five members who were just seated last month.

Dustin Johnson said there is a long list of needed infrastructure repairs downtown, including streets and sidewalks and other underground utilities aside from water. Taking on all those components at once would be cost prohibitive, he said, but the city’s allocation from the American Rescue Plan Act should cover the cost for replacing the area’s decrepit water distribution system.

“It was almost dollar for dollar what we identified in needs for downtown water mains and what was going to come to the city of Lewiston in ARPA money,” Dustin Johnson said. “So they need to be replaced to be brought up to current standards so we can facilitate future growth with Twin City Foods, with the Lewis-Clark Hotel, or just redevelopment on Main Street.”

The scoping study will assess all those problems and attach cost estimates. But perhaps more importantly, it will identify what is necessary now, and what can wait until the city has more funding. That will allow crews to tackle the work in phases that will be less disruptive to business owners, property owners and the traveling public from the torn-up streets.

“I don’t want to come back next year,” Dustin Johnson said. “These businesses have been hit hard enough with COVID, and then to come back and tell them ‘We’re going to shut you down for three summers in a row,’ would be catastrophic.”

He said Public Works engineers have the expertise to do the study themselves. But the staff is simply spread too thin with huge projects like the water and wastewater treatment plant upgrades underway as well as the construction of a new well and reservoir, so an outside consulting firm is needed.

And the city can’t simply delay the study until those big projects wind down because the ARPA funding has to be allocated by 2024 and spent by 2026, he added. Councilor Jim Kleeburg agreed, noting that low water flows for things like fire suppression have been one of the main roadblocks to investment downtown.

“This is one of the projects that we really need to move forward with so we can figure out what size water lines we’re going to get down there,” Kleeburg said. “And anybody can tell you that’s tried to develop down there, meeting with the fire department, what are adequate fire flows and what can you really do with a building down there, there isn’t enough available water. Without enough available water, development is going to wither and die.”

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com