The State Journal-Register
Don Hanrahan
At the April 11 Committee of the Whole meeting of the Springfield City Council, CWLP’s consultant, Bill Elzinga of Amec Foster Wheeler, updated the council on Hunter Lake studies. The upshot is this: The city spent over $500,000 for Amec’s Phase 1 and 2 scoping and alternatives studies, only to learn that the design for Hunter Lake is “fundamentally flawed.”
Opponents of this project have been explaining that to the city for years — for free!
Now, we are told, they need to redesign the whole thing, shrinking its capacity by more than 40 percent. So much for their argument — made for two decades — that on the basis of number of gallons of water produced per dollar spent, Hunter Lake is the least-expensive alternative. Now they hope they can minimize chemical buildup with an unproven and as yet unknown downsized redesign, so they can’t even redeem it with that lame argument.
Amec just got another $396,000 on April 18 to complete the next two parts of its studies, and Crawford Murphy & Tilly will get an extra $71,000 to redesign it — a waste of money on an outdated, unnecessary boondoggle.
Don Hanrahan
Pleasant Plains
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 