By NICK BUDD
Hays Post

The Hays City Commission on Thursday approved a sewer cleaning contract extension with Meyer Services LLC. The service will cost the city $1.21 per square foot of cleaning and videoing, a 1.5 percent increase from the 2013 contract, which was set at $1.19 per square foot.

According to the contract, the cost will not exceed $120,000 and the money will come out of the wastewater/other contractual services fund. The $120,000 is enough to clean approximately 40 miles or about one-sixth of the city sewer lines. City crews will clean another sixth of the sewer lines as well.

Both parties did the same thing last year and they hope to renew the contract again over the next couple of years. The city’s goal is to have all of the sewer lines cleaned by next year. If the contract is continued under the same parameters, all of the city sewer lines will have gone through one round of cleaning by 2015. Once the first round is complete, the plan is to have both parties will go back and clean the lines that the other entity cleaned.

“The nice thing about continuing this contract and obtaining the data that they provide is that at some point we’ll get a very clear picture of the sewer lines,” City Manager Toby Dougherty said. “If we see something that is a hazard right now, we’ll get it fixed in an emergency fashion, but otherwise we’re going to have to rank and prioritize.”

Utilities Director Bernie Kitten said after the Meyer cleans and records video of the sewer lines, it ranks conditions from 1 to 5, with one being the best and five being the worst.

Kitten said the preventative maintenance has several benefits.

“A cracked pipe can sometimes cause a road to cave in,” he said. “If you have a plugged line, it could flood basements.”

The cleaning will take place sometime this summer.