News

By Steve Plunkett

Building a municipal sewer system will cost the town at least $11.2 million, Gulf Stream’s engineering consultants say.
But the price does not include roughly $5 million to take over about 250 privately owned low-pressure “grinder pump basins” that now service the town’s core district, said Jockey Prinyavivatkul, the project manager at Baxter and Woodman Consulting Engineers.
Those pumps send sewage to Boynton Beach for treatment via a 10-inch force main under the Intracoastal. In Baxter and Woodman’s plan, the 10-inch main would be upgraded to also handle waste from the area east of State Road A1A from the Gulf Stream Golf Club to Sea Road.
Sewage from the south part of the town and from Place Au Soleil would be treated by Delray Beach under the plan.
The new townwide system would also need approximately 35,000 linear feet of low-pressure mains, 2,000 linear feet of force mains and pump upgrades at three lift stations in Delray Beach.
Baxter and Woodman also looked at installing a gravity sewer system — the most common type but in Gulf Stream’s case also the most expensive — and a vacuum system that would have required three vacuum pump stations each the size of a small house.
“Imagine a 2,000-square-foot home with a basement, OK? So this is significant,” Prinyavivatkul said.
Town commissioners made no decision at their Aug. 14 meeting on how to proceed with a sewer project. But Commissioner Paul Lyons asked whether the work could be done at the same time roads are being rebuilt and was assured that it was possible.
Gulf Stream is in its second year of a 10-year, $10 million capital improvement plan for streets and water pipes — and now is installing a new water main along the northern part of A1A.
In other business:
• The town will put “No Parking” signs at the western end of Golfview Drive to deter people from hopping over the guardrail to fish in the Intracoastal Waterway. “It’s not constructed to have safe fishing like that in that area. I mean there’s huge boulders and rocks there,” Town Manager Greg Dunham said.
• Gulf Stream will again hire Nowlen, Holt and Miner as its outside auditor. The firm has audited the town since 2000, and state law required that the contract go out to bid again after 20 years. Lyons, Manalapan Town Manager Linda Stumpf and Ocean Ridge Town Manager Tracey Stevens made up the auditor selection committee and reviewed two bids. The county Office of Inspector General scolded Gulf Stream in 2018 for renewing Nowlen, Holt’s contract four times without competitive bidding.