The Knoxville City Council set a public hearing for the Larson Street Pump Station Project at their meeting Monday night.

The project is to replace the current pump station on Larson Street that is roughly 40 years old and in poor condition. The public hearing will be held on November 4th and Knoxville City Manager Heather Ussery says a decision needed to be made by council on how to proceed because all bids came in much higher than the engineers estimate. 

“Those current pumps are about 40 years old, and the way they were manufactured at the time they are ready to be retrofitted. We had the bid opening on October 1st and we did receive five bids which is a great turnout for bid opening day, but the bids were about double what the engineer’s estimate was so at the council meeting staff wanted to have a conversation with council in regards to their options moving forward.”

The low bid that was received was from WRH Inc. out of Amana for just over $613,000.