The City of Lander has decided to wait to apply for funding from the Wyoming Water Development Commission for the planned Lander Wells and Transmission Pipeline Project, municipal staff said this week.
“We ended up punting our wells project for right now,” Public Works Director Lance Hopkin told the Lander City Council during a regular meeting Tuesday, calling it “not-so-great news.”
“We’re asking for an extension through Water Development on that project, and we’re going to put in an application in September that I’ll be asking for a resolution and approval for.”
The project was originally expected to cost about $1 million, Hopkin explained, but inflation pushed the estimate up to more than $2 million, and then the single bid the city received for the work came with a $3.4 million price tag.
“That’s a huge hit,” he said. “We just do not have the money to undertake that, with that kind of increase in (the) project amount.”
Plus, he said, because of the “inflated cost,” the WWDC had decided to recommend funding only 50 percent of the project, instead of the two-thirds requested.
“They were not anticipating having to give us that much funding,” Hopkin explained. “And they did not like that we did not have more than one bid locally, (because) they didn’t feel that was a good comparison for the market.”
The city now plans to return to the WWDC with an updated request to cover two-thirds of the project, he said – a move that will likely push construction back to 2026.
“It’s going to move it a year,” he told the council. “(But) I think it’s important for us to go through that process and see if Water Development does have additional funding.”
Councilmember Julia Stuble said the staff decision “seems like a wise a prudent choice” that will “leverage our dollars in the best way” possible, and Hopkin agreed, though he did note that the project is designed to provide Lander with an “emergency backup supply and additional water.”
“We want to get it in,” he said. “Just timing-wise, right now – based on cost – is not good.”
Fortunately, he said, the new 4-million-gallon water tank the city is building – and recent improvements that have been undertaken at the municipal water plant – provide a “buffer” and put Lander “in a better situation” that “gives us more confidence in the system” so that “hopefully we don’t need to tap into an emergency supply in the near future.”
For more information, call the City of Lander at 332-2870.