GREENFIELD — Greenfield City Council on Sept. 8 unanimously approved a nearly $5 million reduction to a contract for equipment for the city’s wastewater treatment plant upgrade.
The amendment reduces the city’s procurement agreement with Cloacina LLC from $31.08 million to $25.94 million for a packaged membrane bioreactor, or MBR, treatment system.
The MBR system will be part of the city’s planned wastewater treatment plant upgrade, which has an overall estimated cost of $111.3 million. The project is being funded through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program, which includes grants and loans for planning, design, environmental work and construction.
Public Works Director Jamie Tugel said the reduced contract will help the city manage costs across the project.
“The renegotiated contract (saves) us almost $5 million,” said Tugel, adding that it “will also free up funds to be able to ensure that we can fund the remainder of the wastewater treatment upgrade project.”
The lower contract amount follows negotiations among the city, HydroScience Engineers and Cloacina during the design phase to refine the MBR system and related equipment.
One of the major changes was removing one of four MBR treatment trains from Cloacina’s scope while adding capacity and redundancy to the three remaining trains. The amended agreement also adds two sludge dewatering units and shade awnings over equipment skids.
Other changes include removing the low-flow configuration from the three MBR trains, eliminating excess anoxic mixers, changing the type of chemical metering pumps and membranes, adding spare parts and adjusting the project schedule.
Tugel said the city has been looking for ways to reduce costs as the project moves toward construction.
“We know that prices just continually go up, and so we’ve been looking at many different ways on how to save money throughout this process for construction,” she said.
Councilmember Belen Garcia welcomed the reduction.
“It’s nice to see that the bill didn’t go up, and that it’s actually decreased by almost $5 million,” Garcia said.
Mayor Bob White said the savings could help offset increases elsewhere in the project.
“That should help with the cost overruns. Hopefully, we can keep it under our $111 million,” White said.
The original Cloacina agreement, approved in February 2024, was approximately $30.93 million, with an additional $150,000 allocated for design support services. The amended agreement includes that $150,000 for Phase 1 design support and $25.94 million for Phase 2.
According to the city, reducing the Cloacina contract will free up funds for the remainder of the wastewater treatment plant upgrade.
