Sewer contract approved by Paradise Town Council
The town of Paradise has taken another step forward in the plans to connect to Chico’s sewer system with the design process now underway.
Paradise Town Manager Marc Mattox brought forth an agenda item during Tuesday’s Town Council meeting asking the council to approve a contract with the Mountain Cascade- Carollo team for design and build services to the tune of $17 million — maximum.
“Each time we bring the Paradise Sewer Project back before the council, I continue to find more and more excitement and buzz about the project as we get closer to bringing this project to a reality,” Mattox said. “This item before is a representation of literally over a decade of work bringing the project closer to construction.”
The council unanimously approved the contract, with Vice Mayor Greg Bolin recusing himself from this item.
The project consists of linking portions of the town — including parts of Skyway, Pearson Road and Clark Road — to an 18-mile pipeline to Chico’s wastewater treatment plant.
Most of the funding for the project comes from Community Development Block Grant disaster funding, of which about $30 million is dedicated to design and an additional $16 million to go to the project itself.
“Essentially, we are really trying to streamline for the benefit of the cost and schedule and leveraging experience from the constructing team as well as the design time and getting everybody in the same room to provide the best possible project and delivery,” Mattox said.
Paradise Capital Projects Manager Colin Nelson said one thing that sets this project apart from others is that the town will be using what is called a progressive design model. Guy Voss, a consultant on the project with the town as well as the project’s owner’s agent, explained what this means.
“Different from a traditional design/ bid build process where you’d select strictly on price using design documents that were given to a contractor that were provided by an engineer, the engineer and the contractor will be working together from the start,” Voss said. “From the start to come up with the design and create the documents that will be used to procure the work. They’ll be working together to come up with the schedule to understand what it’s going to take and what sequence we should build the work.”
Voss said the two entities, the designer and builder, will then come up with a maximum price for the project.
Fire Department presentation
Along with the update on Camp Fire recovery, Paradise Fire Chief Garrett Needles gave a summary on the total incidents in 2023.
In total, there were 1,731 calls in 2023 and more than half, 936, were urgent medical, followed by medical calls that didn’t require lights and sirens at 254. Public assistance saw the third-highest call rate at 190.
Most of the fire calls were in the other category, which Needles said consisted of things like fences and telephone poles or general electric fires, which came out to 24 calls over the year. There were also 13 vegetation fires, six vehicle fires and three structure fires. The rest of the calls comprised of 62 traffic collisions, 103 hazardous conditions, 130 false alarms and 10 other unlabeled incidents.
The department also assisted other agencies in Butte County, again mostly medical. In total, the department aided in 409 additional incidents overseen by other jurisdictions.
“Mostly, I will tell you that it’s around our small bubble of Paradise,” Needles said. “I’ve got the statistics and we went to Oroville once, we went down to the city once or twice. It’s not as if their down in Gridley six days a week.”
Other highlights included the order of a new fire engine, Station 81’s remodel coming to fruition, two updated trucks and fuel reduction with the help of the California Conservation Corps.