The Utilities Committee met 07/08/2025. They had one item on the agenda which was a request to award the wastewater treatment plan digester cleaning and inspection support contract to Staab Construction Corporation for a total including contingency of $140,990. The committee voted unanimously to recommend the contract be awarded as requested.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The wastewater treatment plant operates two digesters that convert organic material into methane and carbon dioxide. The digesters were originally commissioned in 1993 and last taken offline in 2010 and 2011 as part of an inspection, maintenance, and improvements project. It is time now for an inspection with anticipated maintenance and repairs. Utilities staff want to have an inspection performed of one of the digesters sometime between August and September of this year.
Utilities Director Chris Stempa said that the purpose of the inspection this year was to help them take a look at the state of the digesters and, presuming their were no substantial repairs needed, use the initial inspection findings to help them get an idea of what they will need to do when they take both vessels down next year for future improvements and inspections.
He noted that if they found out there was something that needed to be remedied right away they would take steps to remedy that this year rather than waiting until next year.
They use the biogas created by the digesters to help heat the building, which is why they wanted to perform the inspection during August or September when the weather was still warm and they would miss that biogas since the weather was still warm.
He said that one of the digesters being offline would impact the city’s hauled waste program to some degree. They would still be able to accept some hauled waste, but would have to curtail it because having only one digester functioning would decrease the amount of waste they could hold. He did not have a cost estimate of how much the revenue decrease would be; however, he estimated that hauled waste they could process would be between 15%-20% lower than normal during the month and a half the digester was offline.
They did not put out a public bid to all companies for this project. Because it was maintenance work they had the flexibility to limit it to select companies. They invited three contractors to submit bids. All off those contractors are familiar with the wastewater treatment plant and/or have worked on the digesters before. The city held a mandatory pre-bid meeting that one of the contractors did not attend; as a result, they were not allowed to submit a bid, so the city ended up with only two bids. Director Stempa was satisfied with the bids, saying, “[W]e got a pretty solid price.”
The committee voted 4-0 to recommend the contract be awarded as requested.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1317380&GUID=4CF7CD2E-A202-426B-836B-7ACB878AA5B5
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