Clear Lake council approves first phase of Street & Utility Improvement Project

CLEAR LAKE — The Clear Lake City Council Monday night approved accepting a bid on the first phase of the city’s 2025 Street & Utility Improvement Project.

The city earlier this year approved entering into a professional services agreement with Veenstra & Kimm for the project for the neighborhood immediately to the east of the Veterans Memorial Golf Club. The city had identified that area as needing water main, storm sewer, and pavement rehabilitation improvements.

Jason Petersburg with Veenstra & Kimm says the project mainly addresses drainage issues and repeated water main breaks in that area.   “We’re not doing it for aesthetics, for the most part it’s where there’s ponding issues as there are some very flat areas in that neighborhood. The project also includes a little bit of storm sewer piping, four new storm sewer intakes, and then quite a bit of new water main services. They’ll be getting all new water main along 17th and 18th Street West, West 6th Avenue North, and then Highland Drive as well. There have been a lot of water main breaks in that neighborhood over the years, which is the driver behind this project.”

The city received two bids for the project, with the low bid coming from Brian Nettleton Excavating for $1,241,245, about 4.7% below the engineer’s estimated cost of just over $1.3 million.

The council unanimously approved the bid at their meeting last night.