The Austin City Council approved a bid from Automatic Systems Co. to put in a new lift station telemetry program during its regular meeting Monday night.

The project bid passed with a 6-0 vote. Councilman David Hagen was absent from the meeting,

The projected bid total is $205,193, well short of the $300,000 estimate originally projected by city leaders.

Waste Water Treatment Plant Fund 61 will fund the cost of the project.

There are 21 sanitary sewer lifts that aid in water flow throughout the community. City Engineer Steven Lang described the current communication system as antiquated, stating it runs on telephone lines that sometimes fail when it rains.

Installing the new telemetry system at each of the 21 lift stations accounts for $157,600 of the projected bid. The system will monitor power outages and high float alarms, which can then be relayed to the Waste Water Treatment Plant via radio and allow plant staff to analyze and correct the problems.

The project also calls for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) programming to be installed at the plant at a projected cost of $31,593, including an hourly rate of $125 per hour. Also included in that cost is:

• City map with pin locators for each lift station;

• Individual screen of each lift station to display status and alarms;

• Addition of all lift station alarms to the existing WIN-911 Alarm dialer;

• Integration of lift station common alarms into the existing backup dialer; and

• All necessary travel required to complete the project.

As the project moves into the construction phase, city staff will handle the majority of onsite inspections. However, Lang pointed out that inspections relating to electrical, programming and setup are outside the technical expertise of city staff. Those inspections will be carried out by Short Elliot Hendrickson Inc. and will account for $16,000 of the projected bid.

The second lowest bid came from Quality Flow Systems Inc. at $164,000. That total did not include SCADA programming or the inspection cost.