Fall 2008
This project is now scheduled to be advertised for private contractor bids on February 17th, 2009.
There is good news and bad news since the spring update. The best news is that all of the agreements between WSDOT and WDFW (the Department of Fish and Wildlife) have been signed and executed so we can move ahead with real estate acquisition. It's a huge milestone and key to allowing the project to happen at all. Some others regarding how the fence is situated in relation to Chelan County PUD transmission poles and access points have now also been resolved.
The bad news remains that we're still short $600,000 to build the entire eight miles of fence. More WSDOT funding is a challenge since people are buying fewer gallons of gas, so our revenue is down while inflation of just about everything associated with our construction projects is way up, again, due in large part to oil costs.
We still plan to stick with the construction timeline of next spring or early summer (2009). If we have all the funding, we'll build all eight miles of fence. If we don't have it all, we'll build as many miles as we can with the money we've got. The rest of the fence will become a seperate project.
Spring 2008
The planned construction starting date has moved from this summer to next spring. There are two reasons – getting the property easements to locate the fence and getting more money to build it.
Currently, our Real Estate Office is doing appraisals to prepare offers for 18 separate easements with private property owners and public agencies. Every piece and angle of fence requires detailed land surveying field work and legal descriptions – something that was never thought to be necessary when this process started in 2005. WSDOT right of way acquisition procedures and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife procedures (they don’t have right of eminent domain) turned out to be completely different and writing the property agreement for the property they own took more time than expected. The parcel owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is even more complicated and requires an extra federal environmental report before the easement can be granted and that likely won’t happen until July. On top of that, some of the private properties have changed hands, or the land use has changed, or the property lines have been adjusted since our original surveys. It's requiring some modifications from the original plan.
Despite all that, we expect to have the easements secured by October.
Funding is the second issue. In ’05, the construction estimate was $900,000. Today, it’s $1.6 million. Fuel, steel and concrete have all gone up 40% in just the past year. We’re short about $500,000. We’re optimistic that we can get it from the legislature, a grant, another agency or donations. If none of those sources come through, we’ll look at building the project in stages, which means a fence that’s less than the whole 8 miles to start with.