Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: CONSENT CALENDAR (ACTION)
To: City Council
Subject: CONSIDER RESOLUTION APPROVING THE PURCHASE
AND INSTALLATION OF FIXED GENERATORS AT THE
QUAIL HOLLOW AND NEW CENTURY SEWER LIFT
STATIONS
Date: May 26, 2026
Written by: Craig Scott, Director of Public Works/City Engineer Recommendation
It is recommended the City of Cotati City Council adopt a resolution approving the purchase of two fixed diesel generators and construction contracts for installation of the generators and integration into the City’s Water SCADA system.
Background
The City has four sewer lift stations, all without backup generator power, and during power outages, Public Works staff take two towable generators between the four sites to keep the pumps running. Failure to do so would result in raw sewage spilling into the street. The Quail Hollow and New Century subdivisions are served by two of these sewer lift stations. Since the construction of the subdivisions (New Century in 1984 and Quail Hollow in 1988) until 2018, the City used one towable generator for all four sites, then, in 2018, in the aftermath of the Tubs fire, the City augmented it's one towable generator with a second.
Power outages have become more frequent, and, in 2019, the City placed a rental generator at the Quail Hollow site and that generator has been rented monthly continuously since then. In 2018, the City applied for emergency grant funds to purchase and install generators, but the application has not been approved. The City now has the opportunity to install a fixed generator at each of the Quail Hollow and New Century lift station sites and greatly improve the reliability and resilience to responding to emergency power outages.
Analysis/Discussion
The City has four sewer lift stations as follows: one on the West side of the freeway named Redwood Drive, and three on the North/East of the Freeway named Quail Hollow (located on Myrtle Avenue, between Keppel and Hahn), New Century (located on Eagle Drive, at the pathway to Pocket Park) and Benson Lane. During power outages, a Public Works staff person must manage the sewage depth in each of the four sewer lift station wet wells (the sewage flows into a wet well until it rises to a certain level before triggering the pump to come on) and prevent raw sewage from overflowing into the neighboring areas. At present, this is accomplished with one rental generator at Quail Hollow and the City’s two towable generators. Since there are four lift stations, a towable generator is rotated between two geographically separated lift stations.
The capacity of the wet wells makes this possible, but it requires constant monitoring during the power outage.
Fixed generators are the industry norm for sewer lift stations and have advantages of operating automatically without staff intervention when an outage occurs. At the time of a power outage, power automatically switches from PG&E to generator power, and the generator is signaled to turn on. Once on, the lift station operates normally being controlled by the local controller or “PLC” which reacts to instruments indicating the sewage level in the wet well and proper operation of the pumps.
The Quail Hollow and New Century lift stations can accommodate fixed generators because they have space on their sites and are more desired because the generators cycle more frequently.
Each lift station cycles at different rates depending on the size of the wet well and the amount of sewage flowing into the wet well. On weekends, the Redwood Drive cycles the most infrequently and the North/East lift stations more frequently.
A quote was requested from O’Rourke Electric for the Quail Hollow Lift Station. O’Rourke was asked to select and purchase the generators, then install the conduit, instrumentation, and automatic transfer switch. Because of favorable pricing, Staff then asked O’Rourke for another quote for the New Century Lift Station. The City received the separate quotes from O’Rourke Electric and finds them to be fair and reasonable and recommends both quotes for approval.
Tesco was also approached to provide a quote to integrate the new fixed generators to the City’s SCADA system. SCADA would display information including the status of PGE power, the pump status (on/off), and the run status of the generator. All this information would be accessed remotely by the system Operator. Much of the cost is for the purchase of the generator at each site and having the contractor purchase the generator reduces the chances of errors and omissions in making those orders. The City can also hold the Contractor responsible to ensure the equipment meets the contract specifications.
Financial Considerations
The City included purchasing fixed generators in its Capital Improvement Program as unfunded level B efforts for FY26/27 with a cost of $180,000. This proposed replacement project cost is as follows:
Quail Hollow Quote $ 74,950
New Century Quote $ 72,350
Building Permit Fees $ 4,780
Fence at New Century $ 8,160
Tesco Integration $ 20,000
Contingency $ 15,000
Total $195,240
The City’s Reserve Fund, held by the City of Santa Rosa, acting in accordance with the Subregional Wastewater Treatment Agreement, has grown to $300,292.01. To fund this project, and also return some of the excess funds, the City has requested that Santa Rosa redistribute $250,000 back to the City. With these newly identified funds, staff are proposing to amend the estimated actual budgets for FY 25/26 and the amended budget for FY 26/27 to account for $40,000 to purchase the equipment in FY 25/26 and the remaining $155,240 for installation and integration in FY 26/27. This will be included in the budget amendment agenda item at a future meeting. As such, no new funds would be required to meet the current needs of this project.
Environmental Issues
This action is found to qualify for a Class 1 Categorical Exemption under CEQA Section 15301 in that the project consists of the operation, repair, maintenance, permitting, leasing, licensing, or minor alteration of existing public or private structures, facilities, mechanical equipment, or topographical features, involving negligible or no expansion of the existing or former use.