City of East Wenatchee Expanding 4th Street SE Stormwater Project

The City of East Wenatchee will use some of its surplus stormwater utility funds to expand its 4th Street Southeast Stormwater Trunk Line Project after a recent unanimous decision by the city council.

Project Development Manager Tom Wachholder said the project's contractor, KRCI, will now eliminate the dip in 4th Street's eastbound lane at South Kansas Loop and pave the entire lane with fresh asphalt.

"Initially, to save cost we were just going to pave the trench patch, which is not ideal." explained Wachholder, "But because we had such good bid prices, we want to grind out the entire lane all the way out to the curb line. The whole lane of travel will have new asphalt instead of just the trunk line patch."

Wachholder added that economies of scale and mobilization, like the contractor already being on site, helped reduce the cost of the extra work. The city will pay $8,400 for the expansion. East Wenatchee now has an estimated $221,000 of surplus stormwater utility funds.

KRCI initially submitted a bid of $231,000 for the project, which was significantly lower than an engineer's estimate of $305,000.