City awards bid for Nelson pond

• Detention pond will slow storm water runoff

BROOKINGS – The Brookings City Council checked off one more project from its master drainage program list last Tuesday, approving a $206,377 bid to build what the city’s engineers have labeled the North Nelson Storm Water Detention Pond.

The council got a bargain with the bid, which was about half of the $401,466 engineers had estimated it would cost.

The award went to the R.S. Halstead Corp. of Harrisburg.

The construction contract wasn’t the only drainage and storm water issue on the meeting agenda last week: the council set priorities for an estimated $16 million-plus worth of storm water projects on the city’s master drainage plan.

Adopted in 2008, the master plan includes a dozen specific study areas, all projects designed to carry off storm water and reduce the flooding that has occurred in part of the city. The work involves installation of new culverts, storm sewer lines and detention ponds.

To move the work along, the council, with assistance from the engineering staff, now ranks the importance or urgency of the projects and approves funding on a year-to-year basis as city finances permit.

The North Nelson detention pond project, for example, had been budgeted for this year. It will be financed with a loan through the revolving loan fund of the state Department of Natural Resources, and the city will replay the 3 percent note over a 20-year period.

The detention pond will be built this summer on the south side of 15th Street South in the Nelson Fifth Addition.

City Engineer Jackie Lanning said the work includes grading a new channel at the upstream end of the project to carry water from the existing culverts to the new pond; constructing a two-stage storm water detention and sedimentation pond; constructing an outlet flow control structure; and planting native grasses, trees and wetland flora.

The pond project encompasses about nine acres.

Two local bidders, Bowes Construction and Rounds Construction, submitted bids of approximately $215,000 and $232,000, respectively, and a fourth bid from Dakota Soil Construction of Chancellor came in at more than $673,000.



Contact Ken Curley at kcurley@brookingsregister.com.