The price tag on a complicated lift station project in Sarasota just jumped to $32 million, and a new schedule says it may be mid-2020 before the endeavor is complete. Engineers from McKim and Creed on Monday presented the most recent budget and schedule to the Sarasota City Commission. These updates come more than a decade after a major spill in Hudson Bayou in 2005, yet little progress has been made in that time, and neighbors have grown increasingly impatient. “We know it will get more expensive. Nothing ever gets cheaper,” Central Park resident David Coe told commissioners Monday night. “Just bite the bullet, finance it and get the thing moving.”

Construction of Lift Station 87, to be located at Luke Wood Park, has dragged on thanks to problems and disagreements with original engineers. Sarasota city officials are engaged right now in litigation with previous engineers from Aecom, some of whom sat in chambers during a special meeting on the lift station Monday. McKim and Creed recommend a higher cost but lower risk approach to the project. For example, Aecom recommended a clay microtunnel under Hudson Bayou Bridge that would run 8.5 feet underground, but to make sure the bridge does not collapse, McKim and Creed engineers say the microtunnel should be made of steel and go another eight feet deeper into the earth.

When the new lift station is operational, the city will decommission Lift Station 7, the aged facility on the other side of the bayou. A malfunction at LS7 caused a 550,000-gallon spill in February 2005. City officials say no other spills have happened at the station since then. City Commissioner Liz Alpert, who was sworn in last month, asked at one point if it would be better to just rebuild LS7 instead of going forward with LS87, but engineers said years of design workshops and long-range plans would be lost. "We have gone through a lengthy series of neighborhood workshops and have gotten input from neighbors," said Robert Garland, McKim and Creed Southeast regional manager. And because of limited space the lift station, located in the middle of a neighborhood, a rebuilt LS7 would have to stand at least 35 feet tall. 

Ultimately, all city commissioners signaled support for moving forward with LS87, but no specific direction was given at the meeting as conversation was starting to veer toward legal strategy involving the case with Aecom. The subject was tabled until a later date.