OXFORD — Vendors bidding on equipment for the town’s sewage treatment plant will be given an additional two weeks to submit offers for the multi-million dollar project. 

Requests for bids on the plant’s equipment went out about three weeks ago, and the town planned to hold a public bid opening Thursday afternoon. 

Before the deadline, however, several vendors contacted the town requesting to push back the bid submissions. 

According to Brent Bridges, a vice president from Woodard and Curran, the engineering firm overseeing the sewer project, three vendors attended the annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference in Chicago between Oct. 5 and 9 and were not able to submit bids on time. 

WEFTEC bills itself as the “largest conference of its kind in North America” and most wastewater vendors attend, Bridges said. 

With the majority of the vendors apparently unable to submit bids on time, the Town Office and Woodard and Curran agreed to push the deadline back.

“There’s no reason for us to push it,” Bridges said. “We would rather get good pricing and allow the vendors to be thorough.”

At least five vendors are bidding to supply the equipment used by the sewage treatment plant. 

The proposed state-of-the-art facility uses a series of fine screens, or membranes, to slough off solids before treating the remaining waste with UV light instead of a conventional chemical treatment.

Although the building, storage tanks and piping can be purchased “off the shelf,” the plant’s specialized treatment components need to be custom built, Oxford Town Manager Michael Chammings said.

The town is waiting to choose an equipment vendor before submitting final building designs, including discharge pipe dimensions and other specifics, to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection for possible approval. 

Chammings said the delay won’t affect the construction timetable for the plant, which is scheduled to go online next spring. At a meeting with selectmen last month, Bridges said the town could put out construction bids for the plant in November. 

Last December, voters approved borrowing up to $20.2 million to finance the construction of the sewage treatment plant and the installation of sewer lines through sections of the town. 

Chammings has said that federal and state grants, user fees and funding from the town’s Tax Increment Financing district will be used to pay down the loan. 

The first phase of the project, which includes building the plant at the Welchville Dam intersection and running sewer lines north and south along Route 26 through the town’s TIF zone, is expected to be completed next spring.

The town has yet to determine when or if it will pursue the project’s second phase, to run sewer lines farther north on Route 26 and through residential neighborhoods. 

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