WESTFIELD – The City Council voted 12-1 Thursday to approve the second reading and final passage of a $3.75 million bond to finance repairs to the Granville dam and spillway. The Granville Reservoir provides about half of the city’s drinking water supply.
The sale of that bond is being publicized today in the classified section (Page 14) of the Westfield News.
Water Resource Superintendent Dave Billips said this morning that the city opened bids for the contract on June 13 and that the Purchasing Department is reviewing the six contractor applications to ensure that all city requirements and specifications are met.
“We hope to choose a contractor this week and begin the signature process,” Billips said. “I expect that work will begin in early July.
“We’re a couple of months behind on this project because we ran into snags in the permitting process with the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) and the state dam regulators,” Billips said. “But that not unusual whenever you’re doing work on a dam.”
The Water Commission and Water Resource Department had requested the bond funding to repair the dam and spillway while the reservoir was already off line for improvements to the raw water transmission pipe which transports reservoir water to the city’s treatment plant in Southwick.
The present pipeline limits the flow of water and is leaking, while the proposed pipeline is projected to increase flow from the reservoir to the treatment plant by 1 to 1.5 million gallons a day, a cost avoidance measure by substantially reducing the demand for well water.
The Water Commission voted in April to request a $3.6 million bond to repair the Granville Reservoir spillway and dam. The commission also approved an outdoor water-use ban to begin when the reservoir was taken off line in the middle of April for both the dam repair and transmission main projects.
The dam repair work includes reconstruction of a section of the reservoir overflow channel which was washed out during Tropical Storm Irene, and repairs of damage to the dam face that have occurred since the structure was constructed in 1928.
That storm damage was given a temporary fix in November of 2011 while state dam inspectors, Water Resource Department officials and the Tighe & Bond engineering team assessed damage and considered options to repair the spillway. The engineering cost projection for the spillway repair is $2.1 million, but the project will also include an estimated $1.1 million in repairs to the face of the reservoir dam.
Pushing the “toe” or base out 30 feet, creating a more gradual slope, will augment the dam face.
The original dam, built in 1928, was constructed with “weeping tiles” under the top layer of soil, a system to wick water off the dam face. However, over the years, the dam face has been damaged and a new drainage system will be installed to remediate existing, as well as preventing future, damage to the earthen dam.
