Lake Delhi dam construction delayed

DELHI - Lake Delhi officials' plans to have the lake refilled and ready for recreational activities next year have suffered a setback.

Officials had planned to have the reconstruction of the flood-breached Lake Delhi dam completed by next July, but contractors bidding on Phase 2 of the project declined to bid on a July completion option, according to Steve Leonard, president of the board of trustees of the Combined Lake Delhi Recreational Facility and Water Quality District.

'We're disappointed that none of the contractors would commit to a July completion date, but it's premature to say there will be no water recreation in 2015,” Leonard said.

The trustees, after rejecting the initial round of phase 2 bids, hope the second round will yield a contractor willing to commit to a summer completion date, he said.

Two of the three initial responders bid for a completion of September 2015 and the other for completion in 2016. The bids received ranged from $1.3 million to $4.1 million higher than the original engineer's estimate of $6.6 million.

The board of trustees rejected all bids and is preparing for a re-rebid of Phase 2, which consists of building a cofferdam to divert the river flow and constructing a 400-foot earthen dike topped by a concrete spillway.

Leonard said the board felt that since Phase 2 was not likely to be complete until next fall that it needed to focus on possible cost-saving measures that would not impact a fall 2015 completion date.

The rebid of Phase 2, he said, allows the district to substitute less expensive components. 'We are optimistic that we can get Phase 2 costs where we need them to be,” Leonard said.

Since much of the cost overrun in the initial bids involved earthwork components, the district has undertaken additional soil borings to identify more convenient sources of material suitable for both the cofferdam and the permanent dike, he said.

Material suitable for the cofferdam may be able to be extracted from the lake bed, which would save trucking costs, he said.

By switching most of the work from winter to spring and summer, the financial risk to contractors will be correspondingly reduced, he said.

The district is also considering taking separate bids for the cofferdam and the main dike and identifying more contractors to bid Phase 2 work

The district has also requested a value engineering analysis to identify the major high cost/low value line items in the previous bid to either change to less expensive options, bid them as an alternative price that the district may or may not accept, or eliminate work altogether.

As recently as Sept. 26, during a visit by Gov. Terry Branstad, Leonard said the lake would be refilled by the Fourth of July with favorable winter weather. If bad weather inhibits construction, he said, the lake would probably not be full again until Labor Day.

With a September 2015 completion date, the volume of autumn rainfall would be a critical factor in determining whether the lake would afford any recreational opportunities next year, he said.

Work on Phase 1 - the rehabilitation and upgrading of the dam's concrete structure - remains on schedule and under budget, according to Leonard. The gates that will automatically control the flow of water through the structure will not be installed until Phase 2 is nearly complete, he said.

Residents of the lake district have been working to restore the dam since July 24, 2010, when heavy rains in the Maquoketa River watershed washed out the dike that impounded the 450-acre lake.

The $16 million rebuilding project, which got underway in April, is funded by a $5 million state appropriation, as well as $3 million from Delaware County, $1.7 million raised by Lake Delhi residents and a $6 million bond that residents approved overwhelmingly in 2011.