Work is underway or otherwise scheduled to begin in early 2021 for upgrades to the city’s water treatment facilities and network of water pipes after Longmont voters approved an $80 million bond issue earlier this month.
Longmonters began paying for improvements in January as part of a five-year rate schedule adopted last year by city council.
According to an email from Public Works and Natural Resources spokesperson Becky Schol, the water bond projects and estimated schedules are:
- Nelson-Flanders Water Treatment Plant expansion. The project will use about $38 million of the bond funds. The expansion will add 15 million gallons per day, or MGD, of treatment capacity to the existing 30 MGD capacity. The added capacity will replace the treatment capacity of the older Wade Gaddis Water Treatment Plant, which will be decommissioned after the Nelson-Flanders project is finished. Design will start in early 2021, with construction projected to start in late 2021 or early 2022.
- Price Park drinking water storage tank. The project is being funded mostly with existing water funds, however, a portion of water bonds will be used for construction of the tank. Final design is projected to be completed and construction is expected to start in the third quarter of 2021.
- Montgomery drinking water Storage tank. Water bond funds will be used for construction. Planning and design are projected to occur in late 2021 and early 2022. Construction is projected to start in 2023.
- Price Park transmission lines. Two steel water transmission lines built in the 1920s and ‘30s will need to be rehabilitated. Field investigation and condition assessments are underway, and results will be available in the first quarter of 2021. That assessment will determine if water bond funding will be used on the project.
- Upper North St. Vrain pipeline. Several areas of the steel pipeline that delivers raw water from Longmont Dam to Nelson-Flanders need to be rehabilitated. The project will be funded with a combination of existing water funds and water bond funds. No construction schedule has been determined.
