The City of Prairie City has a number of areas throughout the City that are aging and/or undersized utilities. One such line was the main transmission line from the City to the pump station. This line was old and at times of high ground water had large amounts of I/I. Also this line crossed Dixie Creek and the existing inverted siphon was undersized for large spring flows due to I/I problems throughout the system. The replacement line and inverted siphon were sized to provide for future growth and the I/I problem to try and prevent raw sewage from spilling into Dixie Creek or the John Day River. The crossing of Dixie Creek required a permit from the DSL. Due to early involvement with DSL and ODFW we were able to obtain the necessary permit quickly and smoothly.

The City had decided to replace the waterline since it too was old and undersized for fire protection. The new line provided an adequately sized loop connect for the City to obtain better flow patterns in their system and with the combination of upsizing and additional fire hydrants the city can now proved better fire protect to the public.

The goal of the City was to complete these improvements as cheaply as possible. For this reason they decided to purchase as many of the materials as possible; i.e. pipe, fittings, they supplied the bedding material, meter boxes, etc. The construction contract was mainly for the installation of these materials. This required a little additional time by us to develop a materials list and prepare somewhat less conventional construction documents, and the City staff had to put some extra time into price shopping and ordering materials. The end result was the City saved any markup the construction contractor would have had on the materials and the project was completed well below budget.