By Tom Tolen and Mike Kruzman / news@whmi.com

The Brighton City Council, Thursday night, awarded a bid to a contractor that will fully rehabilitate the city water system’s Summit St. booster station.

The station is located in the hilly southwestern part of the city off Rickett Road. The system was built in 1990, is over 30 years old and has never had a full rehab before. The motors, pump, and valves will be replaced and repainted, and the telemetry will be updated to monitor the water pressure and other aspects of the booster system. New telemetry communication will allow staff to receive notifications for low discharge pressure, power failures, and building temperature.

With the current system, crews are only notified of these issues through resident phone calls or crew discovery during the performance of routine observations. In addition, an alarm system and a backup generator will be installed. A memo from City Manager Nate Geinzer to City Council states that all of the components at the station have exceeded their useful life expectancy, and they want to replace them before a catastrophic failure is encountered.

The City held a mandatory pre-bid meeting with 6 contractors earlier this year and received 3 bids for the project. Council voted unanimously to award the bid to CSM Mechanical at a cost of $125,350. That includes a 15% contingency. Other bids were considerable higher, coming in $180,550 and $243,800 with 15% contingencies.

The project will be paid for using bond proceeds , of which $200,000 has been approved in the 2021/2022 Fiscal Year Budget and Capital Improvement Plan.