Price City officials have responded to recent criticisms of the bidding process for the proposed Garley reservoir and dam, stressing that the operation has been as transparent as possible.
“When we asked for proposals we put a notice in the Sun Advocate and we also knew of companies that were already interested and we sent them copies,” said Russell Seeley, Price City Engineer. “The RFP got picked up by an Internet bid provision service so we got requests for information from all over the western United States. We sent out the RFP to all of them and they all got the same information. Included in that was the request for proposal and then a supplement that goes along with it that has maps. There was a GIS file that was attached to it that needed to be studied to do the bids. In the request the job was considered to be what is called a class one study.”
Bidding ‘a good idea’
City attorney Nick Sampinos pointed out that the city did not actually need to bid out the work, but that the general committee and the technical committee that later awarded the bid, decided it would be a good idea.
“The overall engineering services are being provided by Jones and DeMille,” said Sampinos. “They have the right to subcontract services as needed and this fell within that. But the committee felt it would be good to put it out to public bid.”
Mayor Joe Piccolo explained that the group felt that as much transparency as was possible was needed when working on this project, because there has been some controversy over it and they want information to go out to the public about what is being done.
Many involved
Seeley added that the technical committee that made the final decision consisted of a wide range of stake holders. This included such people and agencies/groups as Seeley and Miles Nelson from Price City, Curtis Page, the Carbon County engineer, engineers from Jones and DeMille, Bob Dalponte, one of the golf course homeowners, Roger Barton with the Association of Conservation Districts, Bill Butcher from the Price River Water Users Association, Keith Grogan from the Price Wellington Canal, Jordan Nielsen from Trout Unlimited, as well as Mark Stilson and Dave Horsley from the State Division of Water Rights. The city said that all these individuals have been involved in the project from the ground up.
One concern that has arisen is the scope of work was to broad. But the city maintains that it wasn’t tight for a reason. The RFP that was wider than some because the idea was to have the environmental engineers recommend the design.
While the city is involved in the project there are also many other agencies and groups that could gain from it. In this case Sampinos said that the city was acting as a fiscal agent for the committee.
Engineers suggested
As a background to this, Seeley said that Jones and DeMille had approached the city a couple of years ago about the project because they had found some funding that could be used for studying it. In conjunction with that a letter sent a few years ago to the city from the Utah State Department of Water Rights, told the town in no uncertain terms that if they did not use a water right they had for 5,000 acre feet of water on the White River by 2021 the city would lose those rights altogether. The city did some other things to try and preserve that right but those did not work out and they were looking for a way to make use of that water. With that thought the city considered that the water could be put in a reservoir such as the Garley Wash project that would not only preserve the water right but would give the area a lower basin reservoir that could benefit many in the area.
“We have also discovered that there may be some direct flow rights that could be placed in the reservoir as well,” stated Piccolo. “But once in the reservoir it would not be Price City’s water but could be used in other ways.”
It was pointed out that other counties have done this kind of project and it has benefited them immensely.