Sheridan amends contract for well services

Acting on Mayor Bob Stump's recommendation, Sheridan Town Council amended a contract with Northern Rockies Engineering during Monday's council meeting. NRE has been working for the town to locate, design and test a new water well.

The amendment allows the town to spend an additional $31,645 for NRE's services to complete design and testing of a new well in the Carey Street area. The total amount committed to NRE for its services will be “just under $50,000,” according to Stump, within the limit for procuring services without a request for quotes.

The mayor reported a test well was finished two weeks ago, supervised by NRE engineer Scott Payne. “We still have high hopes for this well,” said Stump. “We did a test bore where they were blowing high pressure air down into the bottom of the well, to see what kind of water volumes we were generating. We were generating, over a period of about four hours, up to 300 gallons per minute. Pretty excited about that.”

A follow-up pump-test of the well was performed with a 10-horsepower pump. “They ended up with an intake depth of about 400 feet,” said Stump. “When they started pumping, it was pumping about 90 gpm. It declined somewhat to about 70 gpm.... Scott was a little disappointed. He thought from our earlier drilling that we had a really high producing well. Our water right for the deep aquifer is around 550 gpm. He still has no questions that we were going to get that kind of water.”

Stump said the town hopes to have the well and a distribution pipeline completed by August. The mayor contacted the town's on-call engineer, Great West Engineering, to confirm that the pipeline could be completed in that time frame.

“I did contact Great West, since they are our on-call engineering firm, to see if they have the capability of supporting a fast-track schedule,” said Stump. “We are trying, maybe foolishly trying, to get this pipeline and well functional this summer. We've been talking August, trying to get it done by August. In order to do that, we need a pipeline. So, I contacted Great West to see if they have the ability to support a fast-track project that would be done in August. They said they could.”

The mayor expressed gratitude to Morris Land Company and Ranch Resources for allowing the town to use land for the well project.

Councilmember resigns

Councilmember Paul Kramer announced his resignation from council. Kramer said he expended a lot of energy during town water and sewer upgrade projects in the past year, and needed to focus on his job. “My priority is my job and I want to get some things taken care of there,” he said. “It's just time for me to back away right now. The mayor is good, you three guys are great, Ginger's (town clerk Ginger Galiger) doing a great job.”

Stump told Kramer he was sorry to hear of the resignation, but he understood Kramer's reasons. Kramer has served on Sheridan Council for more than 10 years.

In other business, town council:

- Adopted the Madison County Pre-disaster Mitigation Plan.

- Approved an Acre 84 tract plat.

- Elected Mike Walter council president.

- Approved a resolution allowing the town to use water project loan proceeds to reimburse itself for payments made.