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January 30, 2011

Updated Duck River cost: $68 million

Cost could decrease more as plan updates continue

By Trent Moore The Cullman Times

CULLMAN — A more accurate project cost has emerged for the City of Cullman’s Duck River Dam project, as engineer of record CH2M Hill works to update plans originally composed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The current estimated cost: $68 million.

The price tag started at around $60 million several years ago, based on estimates from the Corps, but that was before the project was stalled for nearly a decade by environmental lawsuits that have since been resolved. The estimate then climbed to around $70 million in recent years, due to inflation and other factors, and a more specific cost could not be compiled until the plans were thoroughly reviewed.

“The Corps numbers from 1998 are a little dated, but it’s about 50 pages long and is very thorough, which is good,” Steve Newton, with CH2M Hill, said. “They just had some different escalation values ... but now we have about as good of an estimate as we can at the moment.”

The secondary water reservoir project includes the construction of a 640-acre lake and a six-mile pipeline with a 32-million-gallon-per-day capacity. The reservoir and dam will be located east of Lake Catoma and north of U.S. Highway 278.

With many of the plans now in hand — and the rest set to arrive shortly from the Corps — Newton said his staff hopes to produce an even more exact price estimate in the near future.

Newton said the project costs could actually decrease once the plans are reviewed and adjusted, as there are a handful of cost-savings that could still be added.



* Check out Sunday, JAN. 30, 2011, edition of The Times for the complete story, which includes more details about the progress of the project.

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