The Brighton City Council has approved a one-million-dollar-plus contract with a company to perform interior and exterior painting and other work on the city's two water storage tanks.

Meeting in regular session last Thursday, council unanimously approved a contract with G & L Sandblasting and Coating LLC of Shelbyville, Tennessee at a cost of $1.08 million. The price includes a 15% contingency. G & L was the lowest among six bids received, the highest being $1.6 million submitted by a company out of Omaha, Nebraska.

The work will include sandblasting and repairing the inside of the water towers to remove all the old paint and installing additional safety features on each tower in order to comply with new standards by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Other changes and modifications will be made to comply with state standards set by the Michigan Dept. of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, or EGLE.

The city’s other tower — the 770,000-gallon capacity Summit St. water tower on the city’s south side, will be done in the spring of next year. Some $1.6 million has been approved for the project out of the city’s current budget, using current bond proceeds, as part of the Utilities Capital Improvement Fund. Of that amount, $185,000 has been earmarked for engineering costs, with that work to be performed by Tetra Tech. The base cost of the project is about $877,000, with the rest comprising the 15% contingency.

The first tower to be done is the 600,000 gallon capacity “North Star” water tower on Conference Drive, just off I-96. It's expected to begin in late summer or early fall and be completed in 60 days.