The Knoxville City Council approved a bid for the Larson Street Pump Station Project at their meeting Monday night.

The council received five total bids for this project and they accepted the low bid from WRH Inc. for $613,846. The project is to replace the current pump station on Larson Street that is roughly 40 years old and in poor condition. All the bids for this project came in significantly higher than the engineers estimate and City Manager Heather Ussery believes there are a couple reasons for this.

“The cost of the pumps currently is part of that inflated cost as well as the time frame for purchasing those. If we order those today we won’t receive them for almost 12 months, so I think the lead time on those factoring those in for those contactors that know that this project will be drawn out because of that inflates those costs.”

The bid was passed unanimously by council.