RISON - Mayor Charles Roberts told the Rison City Council Tuesday night that he is doing what he can to salvage more than $7 million in grant money after bids for water and wastewater projects came in much higher than the grant amounts.An information sheet handed out by Rison Utilities Director Joe Freyer showed that the city had approximately $5.5 million in federal American Resuce Plan Act (ARPA) grants to fund improvements to the city's wastewater treatment facility as well as refurbish the city's two water tanks. In addition, the city received about $3.3 million to replace aging water lines in town.Roberts said during Tuesday night's city council meeting that bids for the sewer plant and water tanks came in at about $6.6 million while the water project bid came in at about $6 million, both well above what the grant awards.Roberts said the city's grant application for the water tank and treatment facility included a lot of what he described as "bells and whistles." So when the bids came in higher than expected, he said they removed a lot of the "fat" that was within the original plans. Overall, he said they shaved about $1.1 million off the price. In additon, Freyer said they are working to cut another $200,000 from the project which should allow them move forward with refurbishing the water tanks and sewer plant within the grant amount.The water line grant, however, has proven to be much more challenging. Roberts said they were able to reduce the deficit between the grant and the bid to about $1.1 million. He said he has a meeting lined up this Friday with the Delta Regional Authority (DRA) to see what grant money may be available to make up that difference. Roberts said two factors are probably in play regarding the higher-than-expected bids that each grant project received: inflation and a high demand for contractors.He pointed out that prices for everything have risen over the past 15 months since the grants were first aw...
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