PORT ANGELES — Bids are being sought beginning this week for the Port of Port Angeles’ largest capital project for 2018, which will be built under an administrative order from the state Department of Ecology and for a total that exceeds the budgeted amount.
When completed by Sept. 30, the Marine Terminal Stormwater Treatment Project will include about 2 acres of newly paved area for truck traffic and a cargo staging, primarily for logs — mostly from the North Olympic Peninsula private timberland and British Columbia — that are exported to China.
The total project, located west of Tumwater Creek, is estimated at $2.2 million, including $2.05 million for construction and $200,000 for design.
The project exceeded the budgeted $2 million after additional design work was done to make the project more “site specific,” to avoid a treatment process that employed chemicals and to expand the area planned for paving, port Director of Engineering Chris Hartman said Tuesday.
It’s being built with port capital improvement funds.
Ecology officials said the port had to install the system by this Sept. 30, Hartman said Tuesday before port commissioners unanimously agreed, at their regular meeting, to call for bids beginning Friday.
Untreated stormwater now flows freely into the harbor.
The bid submission deadline is May 16 for the project.
Construction is scheduled to begin June 25 and be “substantially complete” by Sept. 30, the deadline included in the order.
“We are coming right down to the wire to get it installed by the date we agreed to with Ecology,” Hartman said.
It will consist of a low wall and three concrete boxes up to 5 feet tall near the port’s Terminal 3 dock off the Boat Haven parking lot.
“This project is great in that we don’t have any chemicals to filter or disperse,” port board President Connie Beauvais said at the meeting.
“Chemicals are not an issue.”
The treatment facility, approved by Ecology, will process up to 5.5 million gallons of polluted runoff in three concrete “cells,” including a biofiltration rain garden, before pouring through a new outfall, or pipe, into Port Angeles Harbor.
“It will look nearly like drinking water when it’s discharged from the treatment facility,” Hartman said.
Hartman said under the administrative order issued by Ecology, the port agreed to install the new system after the port exceeded its industrial stormwater permit pollution benchmarks for three quarters.
Pollutants including copper, zinc and suspended sediment were flowing into the harbor at concentrations higher than allowed, Hartman said.
Copper and zinc are especially toxic to salmonids “so it’s important that we get our discharges below those benchmark levels, allowable levels,” Hartman said.
The area that will be paved is the last gravel and dirt portion that needs to be improved in what the port calls its surge area.
“It’s the main travel route that trucks take,” Hartman told commissioners.
The smoother ride for drivers also will be more friendly to the environment, Hartman said.
There might be 1,300 to 1,500 trucks offloading a ship, trundling through the gravel before driving onto existing asphalt, Hartman said.
The vehicles track, onto the paved surface, gravel and dirt that drains into the harbor through the existing outfall.
“We have to prevent that,” Hartman said.
A pump will be installed in the current outfall that will push stormwater to the new treatment facility.
The existing outfall will be used solely for high-rain events once the project is completed, Hartman said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
