By Robert Williams

Editor

A contract was awarded to Korby Contracting Co., Inc. of Fergus Falls to complete the County Highway 143 bridge replacement over the Leaf River.

This project will replace two steel span culverts with a bridge along County Highway 143 over the Leaf River southwest of Bluffton. Bids were opened on August 6, with five bids submitted. The low bidder was Korby Contracting Co., Inc., of Fergus Falls, with a bid of $1,182,598.84, 3.5 percent under estimate. The construction will take place in 2027, starting after June 15, and has a completion date of September 17. The project will be primarily funded with $870,000 of federal funding and state bridge replacement funds. There is a small amount of county funds in the project, as well, wheelage and/or sales tax, according to County Engineer Jodi Teich.

The bridge will remain open until construction begins next year.

The project timeline is set to attempt to be the least disruptive to area farmers.

“Bridge construction does take longer, however, in this case, it’s the right thing to do and it also got us a certain source of federal money by opening that up a little bit, as well,” said Teich.

Liquidated damages for a late completion will apply on this project, Teich noted.

“We’re trying to time this thing so the truck traffic to farm all of those…it’s going to be a detour; you have to take out the bridge and put it back in again,” District 2 Commissioner Wayne D. Johnson said. “I  think the timeline set in there at least avoids the heavy truck traffic for the harvest and for the planting.”

Other bids were received from: Redstone Construction, LLC, of Mora; Robert R Schroeder Construction Inc., of Glenwood; Gerit Hanson Contracting, Inc., of Blackduck, and Prahm Construction, Inc., of Slayton.

The engineer’s estimate was $1,225,570.

Highway 8

Teich also gave an update on the Perham Highway 8 road project.

“The Perham project is going very well,” she said. “The contractor’s keeping with the timelines. We’re experiencing some areas where the bituminous is not quite as thick as originally what we thought and what we saw from the borings. That could be because there were a lot of patches along that stretch of road and so, unfortunately, that’s exactly where they took the boring. So, we’re hitting gravel when we expected to still have some asphalt there. We’re still going to have our strength overall on the road and they’re just kind of watching it and seeing what they need to do to do some leveling patches.” 

The same contractor is working on the bypass north of Perham and the paving on county highway 35.

Speed study

Teich responded to requests from area residents to pursue a reduced speed limit on the segment of County State Aid Highway 49 from CSAH 14 to 395th Street, between Marion Lake and Richville.

“The road is narrow and there are a lot of walkers and bicyclists along there,” Teich said.

Otter Tail County believes that a speed zone study on a segment of CSAH 49 would be beneficial in this area and requests that this area of CSAH 49 be studied by the Minnesota Department of Transportation to determine the need for a revised speed zone or zones.

MnDOT will proceed with establishing a legal speed zone if the findings of the traffic study are supportive.

“These do take some time to get completed but we need to get the request in nonetheless,” said Teich.

There is no cost to the county to conduct the study.

Phelps Mill

Parks and Trails Director Kevin Fellbaum submitted a winning bid from VCI Environmental, Inc., of Lino Lakes, for abatement services needed at the Phelps Mill store.

“That store is old and we’re uncovering lots of unsavory things and we need to bring in a secondary contractor to properly abate some of those things, including asbestos and lead,” Fellbaum said. “

Fundings is being provided by a 100 percent match grant from the Minnesota Historical Society of $350,000, making the total project budget $700,00.

The project construction budget is $610,400, a low bid from Comstock Construction, leaving some funds available for the abatement work and any change orders.

VCI’s low bid was $9,850. Both of the other two bids surpassed $23,000.

Outside of the VCI base bid there is a time and materials rate of $150 per hour due to the amount of trash on site. Due to the potential hazardous materials, an abatement company is preferred over a general contracting firm like Comstock, according to Fellbaum.

Comstock’s bid may be lowered pending the amount of hazardous materials removed, especially from the kitchen portion of the store.

VCI is available to do the work in the next week or two.