Multnomah County commissioners will vote June 16 on a construction proposal that could cut the $290 million price tag of the Sellwood Bridge by up to $10 million.

If the proposal is accepted, the current Sellwood Bridge span would be used as a “detour bridge” while the new bridge is constructed. The current span would be moved north 40 feet and set on temporary supports during construction. This proposal would allow the bridge to be built all at once instead of in phases, which the county had previously planned as the method of building the bridge while keeping traffic flow open for all but three weeks of the four year construction period.

The detour bridge proposal would cut costs by streamlining the construction process, shortening the timeline by up to a year. The detour bridge plan would also be expected to make the construction process safer because traffic would be routed onto the detour bridge, away from workers.

If the board approves the proposal, it would still need to be approved by local and federal regulatory agencies, said county spokesman Mike Pullen. Construction for the detour project could begin as early as December.

Currently the Sellwood Bridge project faces a $42 million shortfall, up from $20 million after Clackamas County voters rejected an annual vehicle registration fee that would have covered $22 million of the cost. For the project, the city of Portland is expected to pay $80 million; Multnomah County, $127 million; the state of Oregon, $30 million; and the federal government, $11 million.

The county recently signed a $1.23 million contract for pre-construction services with the construction joint venture of Slayden Construction Group/Sundt Construction. In April, the county signed a $17 million design contract with a team led by T.Y. Lin International in partnership with CH2M HILL. Construction contracts with the construction contractor would be signed in phases and are estimated to total around $160 million, Pullen said.

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When a federal stimulus program offered grants for transportation projects that create jobs and provide a long-term boost for the economy, Portland had a team ready. Called the Innovation Quadrant, it included the area’s biggest players in higher education as well as public agencies, private companies and nonprofits.

The Innovation Quadrant plan would link three main project sites by improving the rail and roadway systems between the southern end of downtown Portland and the inner eastside. One of those sites, Moody Avenue in the South Waterfront, received a $23 million federal grant.

The other two sites got nothing from the federal program. That left planners scrambling for a way to keep the projects alive.

“We’re redoubling our efforts to figure out how to get both of those projects to still move forward,” said Art Pearce, senior project manager with the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

One project would shift streetcar tracks from Southwest Montgomery Street and Fourth Avenue through the site of the future Oregon Sustainability Center. Although the $2 million in stimulus money didn’t come through, Pearce said, there’s a pending state Connect Oregon grant that could replace that portion of the project’s $4 million cost.

Although the Oregon Sustainability Center site doesn’t benefit directly from the stimulus grant, everyone involved in the quadrant benefits from the Moody grant, said Mark Gregory, associate vice president for Portland State University. “We kind of got halfway there,” he said.

The total grant request had been $45.5 million.

“The real vision is: You’ve got the educational institutions, OMSI and a part of town with a lot of development capacity,” he said. “How do you turn that into an economic engine?

“Every project that happens in this area has to be put through that lens,” Gregory said. “We’re large institutions. It only makes sense for us to be thinking of ways to work together.”

Another project site, Southeast Water Avenue, plays heavily into the future of the area’s rail systems. Riders would board light-rail trains and streetcars there before crossing the river on a new transit bridge.

Rerouting Water Avenue would make connections easier for commuters, and move traffic around an area where both the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Portland Opera plan to expand.

The project would cost around $7 million. There aren’t any obvious grant sources that could replace hoped-for federal stimulus money, Pearce said.

Transit agency TriMet plans to build its transit bridge over the Willamette River near OMSI. That bridge ties in with both the Water Avenue and Moody Avenue sites.

Ideally, streetcar tracks would be built at the same time, said Rob Barnard, TriMet project director. For that to happen, money for extending the streetcar system will have to come soon: TriMet this fall plans to issue a notice to proceed for a design-build team for the bridge.

All sides are working to figure out how to include the streetcar system in the project despite the tight budget, Barnard said. “We wouldn’t want to build portions of the bridge and, if funding came after the bridge opened, close it to work on those,” he said.

Despite money being sought independently for each of the project sites, Innovation Quadrant partners see that they all benefit from improvements, Pearce said. Better transportation will turn Oregon Health and Science University, Portland State University and Portland Community College into a seamless campus to produce the ideas and workforce for sustainable jobs.

“The goal is still to see those catalytic projects happening simultaneously,” Pearce said. “People see that it does bolster the work of each of the institutions.”

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For the small coastal communities of Netarts and Oceanside, finding stable ground to build a sewage treatment plant was challenging enough. Then they had to figure out how to get the sewage to a new plant.

The Netarts Oceanside Sanitary District built its treatment plant in 1977 on what turned out to be a sinkhole. “They built it on an old quarry site, and it was never really a stable site,” said Lyle Christensen, natural resource specialist with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

District officials are now seeking contractors to bid on a project to build a new treatment plant. The total project cost is estimated at around $21 million, with construction around $17 million.

Engineers considered two sites northeast of Oceanside for the new treatment plant before selecting the current site, southeast of Oceanside. “We’re along the coast on a hillside,” said Dan Mello, district superintendent.

“There’s no flat land,” he said. “It’s hard to find anything stable and flat.”

The new 9.7-acre site meets those requirements and another, Mello said: unlike the current site, there’s room to grow. The design of the new plant allows it to double in capacity when an expansion is needed.

First, the sewage has to get to the new treatment plant, 3,000 feet away at an elevation gain of 200 feet. Right now, all the pipes lead to the existing plant.

There’s no easy way to reroute those pipes, Mello said. “You would have to redesign our entire collection system,” he said. “It would be cost prohibitive.”

So the project requires drilling through the hillside and building a pump station at the current treatment plant to pump sewage uphill to the new site. Treated water would then be piped downhill to the existing ocean outfall.

Although the district has fewer than 1,500 customers, tourists flood the area in the summer, causing a spike in demand. “In the summer and holidays, people come in to mainly second and third homes,” Mello said. “The hotels get full. Our flows can triple.”

Building a system that can handle those peaks can be expensive. District officials had planned to build the new plant in phases to spread out the cost.

They caught a break last year. “We’ve been working on this treatment plant and upgrading all the pump stations, planning and building since 2001,” Mello said. “Then we happened to luck out on stimulus money.”

The federal stimulus package had given the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development program in Oregon more money to work with, said Sam Goldstein, community programs director for Oregon. The USDA awarded Netarts Oceanside a roughly $9 million grant and a roughly $12 million loan for the project.

“They received as much money in their single package as is allocated to us in a typical year,” Goldstein said.

The USDA considers a community’s size, income level and whether there are potential health issues the project will address. In a tiny district such as Netarts Oceanside, relatively few customers have to shoulder the large cost of a new treatment plant.

“When you’re small, it’s hard to spread the debt service around,” Goldstein said. “They had a fairly desperate need for assistance.”

The district also earned points from the USDA for having an agreement in place with the state DEQ to replace the plant. Although the plant meets permit requirements, its age and the site’s quirky geology pose frequent challenges, Christensen said.

A buried stream erodes rock used to backfill the quarry, undermining the plant, he said. “They’ve had issues with the clarifiers being twisted because the ground was settling,” he said.

“They did what they could.”

With the grant money, the district can now take on the project in one phase, Mello said. The plant is scheduled for completion in October 2011. Earlier plans called for completion in 2012 or 2013.

The new plant will use a similar treatment process as the existing plant, but with newer sequential batch reactor technology to better handle fluctuations in flow, Mello said. It’s designed to last two decades.

Of course, the current plant has held up for 33 years. “They’re all designed for a 20-year life,” he said. “But with maintenance and upkeep, we can extend that.”

The prebid meeting for the project is March 11 at 10 a.m. at the Netarts Fire Hall. Bidding opens on April 1.

The post Stimulus helps coastal sewage treatment plant appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

In the past, whenever Scappoose public works officials had to upgrade a portion of their sewage treatment plant, they had a few main considerations: which parts worked the best for the job and how much the project would cost, for example.

The federal stimulus package added another consideration: where those parts were made.

A “Buy American” provision requires that projects receiving stimulus money use parts made in the United States. Scappoose got $706,000 in stimulus money to improve its treatment plant, which includes an ultraviolet disinfection system.

“One issue we talked about early on was using the Trojan UV system and upgrading it,” said plant supervisor Steve Wabschall. “That system’s made out of Canada.”

Scappoose officials decided to replace some of the system’s parts with American-made components instead of swapping out the whole system. Under a deal that took effect Tuesday, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about buying from Canada.

The U.S. and Canada signed a trade deal last week opening stimulus projects to Canadian suppliers while opening Canadian projects to U.S. suppliers. The deal promises to ease what had become a headache on stimulus projects, particularly water and sewer ones, said Perry Fowler, the director of governmental affairs for the Associated General Contractors of America.

Often, especially in water and sewer project, a needed part has no American makers, Fowler said. “The large pieces of equipment used in treatment facilities, like blowers and ultraviolet treatment systems and membrane filtration systems, a lot of those are manufactured abroad, many in Canada,” he said.

“A lot of those are preferred by the engineers and water authorities for their performance.”

Smaller items may have a single American manufacturer, Fowler said, creating an artificial spike in demand. “A lot of these items with a lot of parts in them are not manufactured in sufficient quantity,” he said. “One manufacturer was granted a virtual monopoly on a pipe fitting of a certain diameter.”

Where finding domestically made parts has been impossible or nearly so, the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency responsible for administering water and sewer projects, has granted waivers. The waiver process has gotten smoother, Fowler said, but can still delay projects.

Responsibility for compliance with the Buy American provisions ultimately rests with the contractor on a project, Fowler said. If an EPA inspector finds foreign parts, even if the supplier swore they were domestic, the contractor could face fines or other penalties, he said.
“We tell our members they have to make extra sure they’re well educated,” Fowler said. “If you go out of business because you used a bolt that’s not made in the U.S., that’s contrary to the goals of the Recovery Act, certainly.”

Despite early concerns, the Scappoose project is moving ahead. Tacoma-based general contractor Pease & Sons should start on the project next month, Wabschall said, as soon as parts arrive.

Although the deal with Canada gives U.S. agencies more flexibility in water and sewer projects, Canada isn’t the only foreign supplier for public works projects. Scappoose officials had to pore over parts in their screening, filtration and pumping systems to make sure all were American-made.

“The consulting engineers had to get all the paperwork up front,” Wabschall said. “We have a screen that was originally made in Germany, but I think (the company) has a plant in Georgia now.”

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The Federal Transit Administration spent the better part of last year doling out money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to projects around the country. Now, one of those projects could lose the it was supposed to receive because its owner, Bay Area Rapid Transit, failed to follow the rules.

BART received the financial rebuke – and a rather – after community activists filed complaints that the agency’s project put a certain group of people living in one neighborhood at a disadvantage. The Oakland Airport Connector, by the way, is a fancy name for what’s basically an extension of the existing BART light-rail system.

More specifically, the activists said, BART violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Let’s just say that’s a really bad idea if you’re trying to build a 3-mile stretch of light-rail track with federal money.

BART’s Title VI problems may run deeper than the connector project. Consumer advocates claim this isn’t the first time BART has failed to play well with others. The FTA is actually finishing up an on-site, agency-wide compliance review of the rapid transit agency – results expected within a few months.

In the meantime, Angela Glover of the nonprofit group PolicyLink says the FTA decision to hold back stimulus money from BART should send a clear message to any party that has a project being paid for with a share of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“We must look at the question of who benefits,” Glover said, “and the answer must be everybody.”

The post FTA yanks project’s stimulus money appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The Federal Transit Administration spent the better part of last year doling out money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to projects around the country. Now, one of those projects could lose the it was supposed to receive because its owner, Bay Area Rapid Transit, failed to follow the rules.

BART received the financial rebuke – and a rather – after community activists filed complaints that the agency’s project put a certain group of people living in one neighborhood at a disadvantage. The Oakland Airport Connector, by the way, is a fancy name for what’s basically an extension of the existing BART light-rail system.

More specifically, the activists said, BART violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Let’s just say that’s a really bad idea if you’re trying to build a 3-mile stretch of light-rail track with federal money.

BART’s Title VI problems may run deeper than the connector project. Consumer advocates claim this isn’t the first time BART has failed to play well with others. The FTA is actually finishing up an on-site, agency-wide compliance review of the rapid transit agency – results expected within a few months.

In the meantime, Angela Glover of the nonprofit group PolicyLink says the FTA decision to hold back stimulus money from BART should send a clear message to any party that has a project being paid for with a share of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“We must look at the question of who benefits,” Glover said, “and the answer must be everybody.”

The post FTA yanks project’s stimulus money appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

UPDATE 3:26 p.m., 1/26/2010: Oregon’s done a better than average job in improving the information it provides on its Web site for tracking federal stimulus projects, according to nonprofit Good Jobs First. Last July, Oregon’s site placed the state in a five-way tie for 23rd place. But a released today give’s Oregon 67 points, the ninth best score in the country. The state even won in several categories for providing bonus information like how much of the stimulus has gone to minority-, women-owned and small businesses.

The first time the nonprofit research group released its of how well – or in some cases, how poorly – states were performing when it came to tracking their stimulus projects online, Oregon came away with one gold star and one black eye.

That was back in July of last year. At the time, the Oregon Department of Transportation fared pretty well. ODOT tied with Florida for the in the country for tracking highway stimulus projects.

But Oregon didn’t perform nearly as well when it came to the way it used its Web site to track its stimulus spending. The state landed in 23rd place by scoring a out of 100 points.  (The one consolation to that dismal showing is that we had company. Georgia, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska also earned 25 points).

You would think that a single state should be pretty consistent for both categories. , for example, walked away with the top spot for its overall and highway tracking efforts. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at the disparity for Oregon. From what we in the 91��Ƶ newsroom found when trying to gather info about the state’s stimulus spending, some agencies and departments are good at knowing what they’ve got and how they’re spending it. Others have room for improvement.

Since the July report came out, Good Jobs First says, several states have improved their online tracking. No news yet on whether Oregon is in that group. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow at 10 a.m., when Good Jobs First releases its newest evaluation and ranking of the state’s stimulus sites. As soon as we know, you will, too.

The post Tracking Oregon’s stimulus tracker appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

UPDATE 3:26 p.m., 1/26/2010: Oregon’s done a better than average job in improving the information it provides on its Web site for tracking federal stimulus projects, according to nonprofit Good Jobs First. Last July, Oregon’s site placed the state in a five-way tie for 23rd place. But a released today give’s Oregon 67 points, the ninth best score in the country. The state even won in several categories for providing bonus information like how much of the stimulus has gone to minority-, women-owned and small businesses.

The first time the nonprofit research group released its of how well – or in some cases, how poorly – states were performing when it came to tracking their stimulus projects online, Oregon came away with one gold star and one black eye.

That was back in July of last year. At the time, the Oregon Department of Transportation fared pretty well. ODOT tied with Florida for the in the country for tracking highway stimulus projects.

But Oregon didn’t perform nearly as well when it came to the way it used its Web site to track its stimulus spending. The state landed in 23rd place by scoring a out of 100 points.  (The one consolation to that dismal showing is that we had company. Georgia, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska also earned 25 points).

You would think that a single state should be pretty consistent for both categories. , for example, walked away with the top spot for its overall and highway tracking efforts. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at the disparity for Oregon. From what we in the 91��Ƶ newsroom found when trying to gather info about the state’s stimulus spending, some agencies and departments are good at knowing what they’ve got and how they’re spending it. Others have room for improvement.

Since the July report came out, Good Jobs First says, several states have improved their online tracking. No news yet on whether Oregon is in that group. We’ll find out for sure tomorrow at 10 a.m., when Good Jobs First releases its newest evaluation and ranking of the state’s stimulus sites. As soon as we know, you will, too.

The post Tracking Oregon’s stimulus tracker appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The “year in review” section of Portland Mayor Sam Adams‘ Web page calls attention to the city’s own stimulus package, passed last January. At that time, City Council pledged to take projects originally scheduled to start in one to three years and “fast track” them over the next 12 months.

A link on leads to a worth of projects.

Farther down, on the same page, is the question “So, what projects were fast tracked?” and promising the full list of projects.

The problem? They’re completely different lists.

A Daily Journal of Commerce investigation last month showed that the city was making slow progress on the original project list. Many of the projects on the list, including some of the largest, were nowhere near starting.

Earlier this month, Commissioner Randy Leonard confirmed that Portland Water Bureau projects on the list had been put on hold to pay for other Water Bureau projects that weren’t on the list. Leonard oversees the Water Bureau.

Adams spokesman Roy Kaufmann responded in a statement Monday afternoon that Adams and the City Council “continue to be committed to fast-tracking a total of $500 million in local capital improvement projects by the end of 2010.” He did not address the discrepancy between the two lists.

The post Stimulus project lists conflict appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

For out-of-work contractors, even a week’s worth of work looks good. But what to do when that week ends?

Contractors say that’s the blessing and curse of Oregon’s stimulus package, which became law in February and rapidly got work started on mostly small projects.

Copeland Sand & Gravel won a $127,000 stimulus contract to fix a parking lot at the Grants Pass armory.

“That allowed us to call back a number of people who were laid off,” said Bill Peterson, the company’s director of administration.

That was good news for the 20 people working on the paving crew, Peterson said. “But it was a three-day paving project.”

Of 547 stimulus projects, 196 were completed and work was underway on another 287 by the beginning of July, creating a total of 839 new jobs, according to the state Department of Administrative Services. The agency also reported that stimulus projects saved a further 3,727 jobs that would have been lost otherwise.

Supporters have said the stimulus would create 3,000 new jobs. A January press release from Senate President Peter Courtney’s office, titled “Senate passes measure to create 3,000 jobs,” makes no reference to saving existing jobs.

On Thursday, Courtney, D-Salem, told the 91��Ƶ that in terms of the stimulus effect, he doesn’t distinguish between jobs created and jobs saved.

“I don’t get into these things,” Courtney said. “To me, a job is a job. I just knew we were doing real projects that needed to be done.”

Bryan Payant, president of McCormack Construction, said the small stimulus projects are like “spitting in the ocean” of the recession. His company, which does $8 million to $10 million of business annually, won a $300,000 Pendleton office building renovation as part of the state stimulus package.

“It’s not a very large project, and the duration is only 90 days,” Payant said. “What impact it does have is short-term.

“Is it really helping out? It is,” Payant said. “If it weren’t, those jobs wouldn’t be there. But is it significant enough to make a difference? Not really.”

Most Republican legislators echoed those concerns when the stimulus package was debated in January.

Because Oregon’s tax structure wasn’t changed to help small businesses, they argued, job gains would not be sustained.

In fact, Nick Smith, a spokesman for state Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, said Thursday that tax increases have made the climate more hostile to business.

Other Republicans broke with their party to support the stimulus package. State Rep. Bob Jenson, R-Pendleton, said he had no illusions that the package would pull Oregon from a recession – or a depression, as he prefers to call it.

“I think visions that this would have turned the whole economy around were shortsighted,” Jenson said. “The idea was to put some immediate dollars into the economy, to try to start circulating dollars, and we did that.”

House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Clackamas County, said the jobs had to be small for the stimulus to work.

“The reason we did it at the beginning of the session was because the other pieces – the jobs and transportation act, health care reform, the affordable housing package, energy-efficient rehabilitation and remodeling – those jobs take longer to come on line.”

“These jobs act as a bridge,” Hunt said.

Whether the bridge is long enough to reach to those measures – or to the $1.3 billion capital construction bill passed on the last day of the legislative session – remains to be seen. Peterson, of Copeland Sand & Gravel, said he’s waiting to see if that happens. He doesn’t have other jobs lined up for the company.

“We’re really all looking forward to that,” he said.

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