Progress on Glidden’s new wastewater lagoon is continuing at a quick pace despite some minor delays encountered during the summer. According to City Administrator, Brooke Peterson, most of the work up to this point has been focused on elements of the project that will not be visible once the lagoon is completed.
The $4.86 million bid from the contractor, King Construction, was approved in September 2020, and at that time, the hope was to have the new lagoon operational by this fall. However, Peterson says they ran into enough minor issues to push the completion date back to spring of 2022.
Peterson says another positive is that they have not encountered any unexpected cost overruns.
Glidden officials first started investigating construction of a new wastewater system more than five years ago after an Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) rules and regulations update made the existing one outdated. The lagoon was originally estimated to come in around $3.5 million, but increases in construction and material costs in addition to required design changes, land purchases and engineering fees resulted in the approximately $1 million increase. The bulk of the project will be funded through a loan from the State Revolving Fund (SRF) with the remainder sourced from available grants and annual utility rate increases.
