The Fortuna City Council unanimously approved two amendments totaling $2.981 million to the city’s engineering services agreement with Jacobs for the Wastewater Treatment Plant NPDES Compliance Project during its Sept. 21 meeting.
Amendment 5 authorizes $442,000 for final design and bid-phase services for plant upgrades, including aeration basins, according to the council meeting transcript. Amendment 6 provides $2.539 million for construction implementation of the plant’s supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, system, including hardware purchases, programming and related work.
City staff told the council that SCADA is the plant’s monitoring and control system and that the work is being advanced on a separate track so the upgraded facilities can connect to a more reliable system. The broader project includes denitrification improvements intended to address nitrogen in the treated effluent and meet National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System requirements, staff said.
The council’s motion also authorized the city to procure and contract directly for related electrical installation work rather than pay a Jacobs markup. Staff said sufficient appropriations were available in the current fiscal year’s wastewater capital budget.
The action does not settle how the full project will be financed. Staff said the eventual mix could include loans, principal forgiveness, grants and ratepayer funding, with the scope of work depending in part on that funding picture. The city has not yet publicly resolved the project’s eventual rate impacts or overall financing plan in the materials reviewed for this report.
