By Terrance Thornton | Digital Free Press
While there may be something perpetually ‘rotten in the state of Denmark,’ there certainly isn’t anything afoul with the sewer system serving the Town of Paradise Valley as local officials there continue to maintain one of the municipality’s largest direct service to residents.
Paradise Valley Town Council has approved a total allocation of $867,962.67 to move forward with rehabilitation of certain portions of its sewer system as identified through a municipal assessment program.
Three separate contracts and the General Fund contingency transfer are the result of portions of the project not getting into last fiscal year’s scope of work whereas all work contemplated to commence in early calendar year 2025 has been budgeted but not for the current fiscal year, town leaders say.
The Town of Paradise Valley begins a new fiscal year on July 1.
“Per the town’s intergovernmental agreement with the city of Scottsdale for wastewater treatment, the town completed a 5-year sanitary sewer assessment,” said Community Development Director Chad Weaver in his Oct. 24 report to Town Council. “The sewer assessment program consisted of the inspection and numerical ranking of sewer pipes and manholes.”
In all, in unanimous fashion, Paradise Valley Town Council approved on Oct. 24 the following budget items to carryout sewer system rehabilitation in the northern region of the municipality:
- Execution of contract No. CON-25-017-ENG with Achen-Gardner Construction in the amount not-to-exceed $732,901.24 for Sewer rehabilitation construction services.
- Execution of the first amendment to contract No. CON-24-024-ENG with Consor North America to increase the combined not-to-exceed compensation from $31,531.42 to $65,605.78 for sewer rehabilitation construction administration & inspection services.
- Execute contract No. CON-25-018-ENG with Pipeline Video Inspection in the amount not-to-exceed $103,530.01 for manhole rehabilitation construction services.
- Authorize budget transfer in the amount of $668,570.74 from General Fund contingency to sewer system repairs budget
In his report, Mr. Weaver points out revenue derived for sewer system maintenance comes directly from fees charged to users of the system.
“The fiscal year ’25 sewer fund budget includes $300,000 for sewer system repair; however, the amount required to complete the proposed rehabilitation and repairs and provide for emergency sewer repairs is $968,570.74,” he outlined in his report to Town Council. “This amount is more than the fiscal year 2025 budget by $668,570.74 mostly due to not being able to complete the planned repairs in fiscal year ‘24.”
Numbers show the unrestricted sewer fund balance — an enterprise fund of the municipality — stands at $2,561,147.
Paradise Valley Town Council talks sewer rehab and missing manholes
Paradise Valley Town Council hosted a work session discussion in the afternoon hours of Thursday, Oct. 24 to learn more about the need for the General Fund transfer and the scope of the work now underway.
“We are required to redo this assessment every five years — it is a non-linear process,” said Sam Kayat, Paradise Valley senior engineer, at the Oct. 24 work session discussion. “This is money we would have spent last year if we would have the contracts ready to go.”
Mr. Kayat outline to Town Council the scope of the rehabilitation efforts as well as challenges uncovering some manholes mapped on municipal charts but obscured due to private development on private property.
The latest Paradise Valley sewer assessment was conducted from 2016 to 2021 and revealed 63 miles of sanitary sewer pipe within municipal limits. Also, there are 200 manholes and 74 sewer pipe segments in need of repair, town officials report.
Of Note: 10 of those manholes have yet to be located.
“Have we found all the manholes that we are looking for in inventory?” Councilwoman Julie Pace asked of Mr. Kayat.
Mr. Kayat explained that a handful, perhaps 10 in all, present challenges to assess properly as they are found on private property requiring additional efforts.
“Don’t we have easements in place?” Councilman Scott Moore asked.
“You can’t put a sewer line without an easement, right? I think it sounds like we didn’t get a full assessment done. I realize this is a budget transfer but there is something of a real risk here and we can’t do anything about it if we can’t access those panels.”
Andrew McGuire, Paradise Valley town attorney, acknowledged the precarious legal matter.
“We have had this conversation with residents,” he said. “There are a lot of historical inconsistencies in the town regarding easements — the easements have not always been honored and in some cases encroachment of the easements can include walls, landscaping and all kinds of things.”
Paradise Valley Mayor Jerry Bien-Willner offered his historical perspective pointing out rehabilitation efforts spanning several fiscal years.
“I don’t want to create a boogeyman around locating missing manholes,” Mayor Bien-Willner said explaining that all sewer access points are mapped. “I am confident that we are not hearing about an emergency from you.”
