Consent Agenda Item 3f
STAFF REPORT
Consent Agenda Item
DATE: April 6, 2026
TO: Honorable Mayor and Council Members
FROM: Brian Issa, Public Works Director
THROUGH: Amy Nilsen, City Manager
SUBJECT: Authorize the City Manager to Execute a Professional Services Contract Amendment with Jacobs for City’s Wastewater National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Compliance Project (CIP 0171 Amendment #4).
STAFF RECOMMENDATION:
Authorize the City Manager to execute a professional services contract amendment in the amount of $409,821 with Jacobs to provide engineering and support services for the City of Fortuna Wastewater National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Compliance Project, Capital Improvement Program (CIP) 0171, and establish a contract not to exceed limit of $5,100,302.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The City of Fortuna is the owner and operator of the Tom Cooke Memorial Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP). The plant currently operates as an activated sludge secondary treatment facility, which focuses on the removal of organic matter and suspended solids, and at present does not treat the effluent to remove nutrients (nitrogen or phosphorus). Under current operating conditions, treated effluent is discharged during wet weather periods to Strongs Creek and during dry weather periods to two percolation ponds located generally along the eastern bank of the Eel River.
The City’s WWTP operates under the jurisdiction of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (Board). In 2017 the Board adopted a Time Schedule Order (TSO) and Waste Discharge Requirement (WDR) for the City’s WWTP. Specifically these orders require that the City treat wastewater to remove nitrogen (by enforcing effluent nitrogen limits on the City’s WWTP), and to move the City’s dry weather effluent discharge from the existing percolation ponds to a new location not affecting surface water flows, the assumption being that the ponds are hydraulically linked to the adjacent river and therefore, discharge to the ponds is functionally equivalent to a direct river discharge. Also included in these orders is a compliance schedule, which outlines the timeframe in which the City is required to achieve the overarching goals of the orders. The primary work products required by the Board Orders are shown in the table below:
Consent Agenda Item 3f
Table 1. Summary of TSO and NPDES Permit Requirements.
Phase of Work TSO/NPDES Permit Requirement
Preliminary Engineering
and California
Environmental Quality
Act (CEQA)
Compliance
Evaluate water quality impacts of discharge on Strong’s Creek and the Eel River
Evaluate site-specific disposal alternatives and develop a technical report for the Preferred Alternative
Submit a preliminary report of waste discharge
Complete CEQA for the Preferred Alternative
Complete a Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Study
Develop a technical report for the Preferred Treatment Alternative Engineering Design,
Permitting, and
Construction
Secure funding for the preferred alternative
Secure necessary land rights and right of way
Complete final design plans, permits, and reports of waste discharge
Complete construction
After receiving the orders from the Board in 2017, the City began working with GHD to complete all items included in the Preliminary Engineering and CEQA Compliance phase of work, shown in Table 1 above. These items were completed and furnished to the Board in 2020.
After completing the Preliminary Engineering and CEQA Compliance phase of work, staff decided to put the Engineering Design and Permitting phase of the project out for competitive bid. In October of 2020, this culminated in awarding a $3 million engineering contract to Jacobs Engineering. In early 2021 the Jacobs team began developing work under the Project Definition phase of work in the scope, which included gathering treatment plant data, developing the wastewater process models, and performing the preliminary field investigations required to facilitate the design. These investigations included the geotechnical/geophysical investigation required to facilitate the design of the directionally-bored pipeline that at that time was envisioned to lead to a new subsurface effluent disposal field on the western side of the Eel River.
In early 2022, the City was contacted by the Regional Board regarding the City’s deliverables associated with the Preliminary Engineering and CEQA Compliance phase of work (as noted submitted in 2020). The Board took exception to the Preliminary Report of Waste Discharge, which showed that the proposed subsurface percolation field on the opposite side of the river could result in the same functional discharge to surfaced water as the existing ponds. This ultimately led to the City pivoting and approximately $625,000 of the original contract was repurposed for other professional support that was required to deal with the new project uncertainties. This work included assistance to update the City’s grant funding application, a CEQA document amendment, providing triennial review support, expediting the City’s water and wastewater rate study, and providing oversight for the City’s updated Anti-Degradation Analysis.
From 2022 to late 2024, City staff and Jacobs worked with the Regional Board to re-envision the project, specifically the requirement that the City move the location of summertime effluent discharge. Through some expanded analysis which modelled the proposed effluent disposal field on the opposite side of the river, it was found that over time the new percolation fields were anticipated to result in the same impacts as the current percolation ponds at the WWTP. With this finding City staff were very hesitant to proceed with a project that either could be rejected by the Board, or could be deemed out of compliance within a short period of time with the ever-changing regulatory climate. With no alternative disposal site apparent, in 2024 the City was directed by Consent Agenda Item 3f
Water Board staff to pursue an amendment to the Basin Plan to allow the City to continue to use the existing percolation ponds for summertime effluent disposal into the future. Rather than developing an alternative disposal regime, the City would seek an exemption to the summer surface water discharge prohibition under the premise that the City’s effluent has no potential to degrade surface water quality or adversely affect the beneficial uses thereof. The City was successfully added to the project review list in the summer of 2024. Since that time, staff have been actively working with the Regional Board, Jacobs and SHN to provide support for the City’s Basin Plan amendment request including significant efforts to characterize the flow of groundwater and any constituents that may be transported from the percolation ponds. This analysis is ongoing, but preliminary results appear to support the City’s stance that discharge to the ponds has no adverse effects on surface water quality.
With the disposal portion of the project on a track for an alternate resolution, staff worked with Jacobs to re-evaluate the treatment plant upgrade project. The primary goal of reassessing the Project Definition work phase was to make sure that the compliance project at the WWTP would be robust and scalable in the future, given that regulatory treatment mandates will continue to increase. Additionally, given that another five years had elapsed since the previous contract, staff identified several new items that needed to be included in the project, most notably including redesigning and constructing a new Supervisory Controls and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network, which is the system of hardware and software that runs and records the functions of the entire plant. The City’s current SCADA system will be unsupported by the hardware suppliers in 2028 and is extremely brittle and a significant source of concern for our operators. In April of 2025 staff brought an amended contract to Council for approval including this new scope of work.
SCADA design and implementation is complex and involves extremely specialized disciplines such as Project Logic Controller (PLC) programming, Human Machine Interface (HMI) development, electrical engineering, Information Technology (IT) network development and cyber security. Because these disciplines are largely unfamiliar to most City staff, SCADA projects require a great deal of faith that the contractor knows what they are doing, understands the City’s needs and has the resources to fully execute on that vision. Based on staff’s previous experience with SCADA upgrade projects and contractors that delivered incomplete or substandard work products that resulted in long-term operational issues and protracted litigation, we chose to frontload SCADA design providing additional focus on this task to ensure that Jacobs understood what the current situation was and what the City desires to achieve. Through this additional focus staff hope to ensure that the City receives a thorough, robust and secure update to the SCADA system ahead of commissioning the other equipment. Along the way, staff have called upon Jacobs to help us through SCADA outages and problems with the existing system which allowed them to become intimately familiar with its shortcomings.
It is often the case that treatment plant upgrades add new equipment and wiring to the system but don’t clean up the existing work or standardize equipment to ensure full functionality. The industry has advanced in the 25+ years since the system was originally built including advances in software, hardware, backups and security requirements and staff want to ensure that the system we are handed at the end of this project is built to industry standards. Staff have directed the Jacobs team to implement new software and hardware, to standardize equipment and clean up existing wiring and cabinet layouts whenever possible, the desired result being a “clean slate” moving forward rather than a collection of patches and band-aids on the existing system. The amendment reflects this additional direction and the work required to deliver a system that will serve the City for decades to come.
Consent Agenda Item 3f
The proposed amendment reflects the additional emphasis on the SCADA portion of the project and a refined understanding of the work involved on the part of the contractor. A detailed description of the services to be provided pursuant to this amendment is attached as Attachment 1.
The amendment has been reviewed in detail and staff believe the proposed fee is reasonable, and the proposed scope would cover the necessary work. Staff strongly recommend that the Council approve the proposed contract amendment.
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
The proposed contract amendment is included as Attachment 1, and the funding summary table from the amendment is presented below.
As shown, an additional $409,821 is being requested by Jacobs to augment the existing contract and take the SCADA Design phase of this project to full completion. The funding augmentations would go to the Final Engineering Design phase of work.
The additional design funding would be paid for from the Wastewater Reserve Fund (560), which currently has a 2025 year-end fund balance of $7.7 million. The NPDES Compliance Project was also one of the key budget considerations for the recent water and wastewater rate study and rate adjustments that were adopted in 2024. In the five-year rate study, the project was budgeted at $40 million in City funding potential, with an anticipated additional $5.5 million that is expected to be made available as grant funding from the Clean Water State Revolving fund. The current project delivery estimate is approximately $45 million (including Construction and Engineering), which generally matches the City’s budgeting at this point.
RECOMMENDED COUNCIL ACTION:
Motion to approve a professional services contract amendment in the amount of $409,821 with Jacobs Engineering to provide engineering and support services for the City of Fortuna Wastewater NPDES Compliance Project, CIP 0171, and establish a contract not to exceed limit of $5,100,302. Consent Agenda vote.
ALTERNATIVES:
1. Adopt the proposed contract amendment (recommended action)
2. Delay the amendment and direct staff to provide specific information to aid in making a decision. Staff does not recommend this option as it has the potential to cause significant delay in design and bidding of the SCADA project.
3. Reject the proposed amendment. Also not recommended as it would require a significant change of direction and revising the scope of the SCADA project to trim a significant amount of work from the current plan.
ATTACHMENTS:
1. Jacobs Engineering Draft Contract Amendment #4