Wastewater treatment plant costs increase

The expansion effort is the largest capital improvement project in the history of the city. 

“The plant's an old facility. It needs updating … so this project replaces the liquid treatment process with a new facility. Second of all, we want to make the current and future regulations that regulate the quality of what we put into the San Francisco Bay,” said David Umezaki, senior engineer at EKI Environment & Water. “We want to expand the plant’s capacity. Right now, it's 60 million gallons per day, and this expansion increases it to cover the wet weather flows during storms so it expands that to 78 million gallons a day.” 

While San Mateo is the lead agency, completing much of the design and construction aspects, the Estero Municipal Improvement District — which constitutes the Foster City Council — has a 24% stake in the expansion efforts. 

During a recent March council meeting, staff explained the reasons for the increased costs, some of which are related to HVAC material, stormwater pollution prevention or piping issues. 

“There are always going to be changes, unfortunately, on any construction project, and on a project this huge and as complex as this, there have been a number of change requests,” said Umezaki. 

There is also a $9 million estimated increase to annual major component projects, which include ongoing rehabilitation and replacement needs. 

Umezaki said they hope to decrease some of the estimate increases as it continues its negotiations with the contractor.

The project has been funded in large part by previous sewer rate increases over several years starting in 2017 — though further rate increases to fund the remaining costs are not likely, said Public Works Director Andrew Brozyna.

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