The city of Portsmouth will award a contract for $63,480.75 to Distel Construction for the relocation of a sanitary sewer line to make room for the Southern Ohio Veterans Memorial Highway (Portsmouth Bypass).

The plans showed the highway going directly overtop of Slocum Road and with the current system located at the intersection of Pershing Avenue and Slocum Road at Highland Bend, that meant a large portion of the city’s sanitary sewer line would have to be replaced.

“It’s (bypass) coming right overtop of Slocum Road and some of the foundations for the bridge there are going to be right over top of our sewers,” Portsmouth Wastewater Director Rick Duncan said. “So we have to relocate them. It is where the new highway is coming on that far end of Sciotoville.”

City Council was scheduled Monday night to authorize the city manager to enter into a contract with Distel for emergency relocation and to declare the action to be an emergency.

Duncan solicited quotes for the project and all three were in excess of $50,000 with “Contractor B” placing a bid of $90,917 and “Contractor C” placing a bid of $117,890.17.

Normally the city can’t award a contract in excess of $50,000 without going through a formal bidding process. However, the Ohio Department of Trans;portation (ODOT) has asked the city to award the contract to the low bidder as an emergency without formally bidding it because of the bypass construction schedule.

Council is required to award the contract to the low bidder and to authorize it as an emergency for that to take place. It is expected that will occur.

Distel is prepared to begin immediately and all the city’s costs (engineering and construction) will be reimbursed to the city within two weeks of submission of invoices to ODOT.