Almota Four road project low bid comes in at $5.5 million

Bids for the extensive Almota Four road project were opened Monday with six companies submitting.

Lowest bid came from M.A. DeAtley of Clarkston, for $5,561,284.75.

The county's Public Works Department will now review each of the six bids before recommending a finalist to county commissioners.

“Right now, the (DeAtley) bid survived all scrutiny,” said Mark Storey, Public Works director, later Monday.

By law, the county must accept the lowest qualified bid which checks out under review.

The county will also decide if they can afford it. The engineer's estimate for the project, made almost five years ago, was $4.93 million.

The discrepancy, due mainly to inflation, would have be covered by county road fund reserves.

“We're probably going to award this,” said Storey. “It's a tough question. We figured we'd have to put some county money in, but it's making sure we can afford it. If this is going to cause us difficulty in operations over the next year or two. If this was $6 million I'm not sure we would award it. Five million is a lot of money, for a county road project, especially.”

If Storey – with county commissioners' input – opts not to award a bid, the county could take the project back to the drawing board to cut out some cost and return to a bid process a second time.

“I think anything we redesigned would clearly be inferior,” Storey said. “It is our goal to build this road as we envisioned, if we can afford it.”

Bids were submitted from companies in Seattle, Rathdrum, Idaho and Lewiston-Clarkston area.

M.L. Albright & Sons of Lewiston bid $7,265,021.28, Debco Construction of Orofino $6,035,140, Scarsella Brothers, Inc. of Spokane, $6,184,452.20, Western Construction of Lewiston $6,073,876.10 and La Riviere, Inc. of Rathdrum, Id, $5,800,433.92.

The Almota Four project spans 3.5 miles between Union Flat Creek and State Route 194 at Onecho Bible Church.

It calls for widening the road from 28 to 34 feet.

Almota Four is part of a four-phase, 12-mile reconstruction project which began in 2009.

Phase Four went through months of delay this spring and summer as right-of-way agreements took longer than expected. The project was slated to be built this year, but in turn, has been moved to 2020.