Greenbelt awards contracts for wells

Greenbelt Water Authority has awarded contracts worth about $890,000 to drill wells on the north side of Clarendon and build a 14-inch pipeline to carry groundwater to the authority’s filter plant.

General Manager Bobbie Kidd said the Greenbelt Board awarded the final contracts last week after the authority received confirmation that $1.5 million in bond funds had been deposited in Greenbelt’s account.

Bids on the project came in well below estimates that OJD Engineers had projected. The pipeline was expected to cost $770,000 and came in at $588,481 and will be built by Amarillo Utility Construction. 4M Drilling from Claude will dig the wells at a cost of about $130,000, which was expected to be $152,000. And electrical work will be done for $170,000 by Ray Electric of Amarillo.

With the extra funds available Kidd said the authority will consider increasing the size of some piping connecting five new wells to the new 14-inch line, and the authority is also exploring securing some water resources in addition to the city’s groundwater.

As soon as a pre-construction meeting can be held and all the contracts are signed, contractors will have 120 days to complete the project, and the City of Clarendon will be on track to reap $146,000 for every 1,000 acre feet of water that Greenbelt harvests from its wells in the coming years.

Greenbelt will have to pay off its bonds over the next 15 years and will continue to pursue other groundwater options for the future.

As of this week, Kidd said the Greenbelt Reservoir had an elevation of about 40.86 feet and is considered to be at 14 percent capacity. That translates into about 2.7 billion gallons of water, which would last about two years under present consumption patterns if evaporation is not taken into consideration.

Kidd said ground water from the city at most would provide about 50 percent of Greenbelt’s water and more likely would only provide 25 to 30 percent with the majority of the water still coming from the reservoir.