The U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) says the final request for proposals for construction of the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn., could come any time now.
The office said in a Feb. 6 procurement notice the final RFP could be issued within 15 to 45 days. One-on-one meetings were held Jan. 3 and 4 with parties that might be interested in submitting a bid to build the water treatment plant to remediate mercury at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The RFP had not been issued as of early Thursday.
The Office of Environmental Management released a draft request for proposals in November. Some of the companies that registered for January industry day information sessions included Areva Federal Services, Atkins, Bechtel, Jacobs, Northwind Group, and Veolia.
The Energy Department is looking for a contractor to build, test, and operate the facility to treat contaminated water before it is discharged into East Fork Poplar Creek from the Y-12 storm sewer.
The agency also expects the treatment plant will better prepare the site for managing additional mercury that could be stirred up from planned building demolitions and soil remediation at the site.
The Energy Department has said it expects bidders will have 30 calendar days from the date of the final RFP to submit contract proposals. The actual contract award could come sometime from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 to the second quarter of fiscal 2019, according to DOE. The department expects to award a four-year, firm-fixed-price contract. Cost estimates for the contract, and for the plant itself, were not immediately available.
Y-12 is overseen by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. More than 24 million pounds of mercury were used at Y-12, dating to the 1950s and 1960s, in connection with nuclear weapons research. The Energy Department has estimated roughly 2 million pounds of mercury have been spilled or lost. About 700,000 pounds of this amount was lost into the environment, which includes contamination of buildings, soils, and water, according to DOE materials.
Oak Ridge cleanup prime URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR) has developed the design for the mercury treatment project facility. The plant is intended to go online in 2022.
