Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
More than three years after Monticello officials began pursuing the installation of a 500 kW solar array at the wastewater treatment plant to reduce significantly the facility’s energy costs, the project’s construction is finally within sight. Based on the recommendation of the engineering firm of Mittauer & Associates, Inc., the Monticello City Council awarded the construction contract to Gadsden County- based CSI Contracting, Inc., on Tuesday evening, March 7. CSI’s bid, the lower of two received, was for $2,001,489. The City officials began pursuing the solar array project in 2019, prompted by then City Manager Steve Wingate. In early 2020, the city submitted a lengthy plan to the state for the conversion of the wastewater treatment plant on Mamie Scott Drive into a self-sufficient solar energy generating facility, a plan that the FDEP not long after approved. At that time, Mittauer informed the council that the next step would be the design phase, the funding for which his firm had already applied to the state. It was then Mittauer’s expectation that the firm would start the design work in May 2020 and have it completed by fall, following which would come the construction phase. That, of course, was pre-Covid-19 and the resulting pandemic that put most everything on hold. The next time that the issue came before the council was in December 2021, when it acted on three separate items to move the project forward. The three were a solar array construction agreement, a loan-authorizing resolution, and a fee schedule for the engineers, all necessary steps to secure the necessary grant funding from the FDEP for construction of the array. At the time, Joe Mittauer, of Mittauer Associates Inc., told the council that the project would cost $2,237,000, of which amount the FDEP would provide $1,789,600 in the form of a Small Communities Wastewater Construction Grant (SCWCG) and another $447,000 in the form of a low-interest loan. The state, in other words, would fund 80 percent of the project, Mittauer said. And the city, he said, would be responsible for the other 20 percent, represented by the loan, the repayment of which would extend over a 20-year-period. Meanwhile, Mittauer Associates’ consultant fee for guiding the city through the grant process and the later bidding and construction phases, was set at $237,000. At the time that the package containing the signed agreement and resolution was sent to the FDEP, the agency was expected to respond fairly quickly, so that the bidding process could happen as soon as the first quarter of 2022. That, at least, was the expectation at the time. The FDEP was reported to be enthusiastic about the project, as Monticello’s would become the second wastewater plant in Florida to operate solely on solar power. “The FDEP is very excited about the project,” Mittauer told the council at the time. Why it took from December 2021 until the present to get the FDEP to respond to the city’s application is something that Mittauer did not address, at least not in the letter of recommendation to the city. Nor did the letter say when exactly the construction phase on the project might begin. One cause for the delay could possibly be attributed to the labor and supply shortages and other upheavals that followed the pandemic. Once the solar array is installed and operational, it’s supposed to save the city about $40,000 annually in energy costs, according to figures that Mittauer presented to the council in 2020, based on 2018 figures. At the time, Mittauer told the council that the city’s average power cost had risen 11.6 percent due to higher energy consumption and recent rate increases, trends that he said were likely to continue. His point was that installation of the solar array would help the city get off the energy cost merry-go-round to a degree. And if the state should ever decided to impose a carbon tax, as some lawmakers then were proposing, the city could well see a 20-percent jump in energy costs, Mittauer said. At the time, the average electric bill to operate the plant was $5,032 monthly, or about $60,370 annually. The solar array, Mittauer said, would save the city $25,080 annually in energy costs once the loan payments and operational and maintenance costs were deducted from the $60,370. “The annual debt service and operation and maintenance of the system will be fully offset by the savings in power costs,” Mittauer said at the time, adding that factoring in the grant amount, the system should pay for itself in nine years.
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