MARSHALL — Bids for proposed repairs to Marshall sewer lines came in lower than an engineer’s estimate, Marshall Public Works Director Jason Anderson said this week.

Members of the Marshall City Council voted to approve a total construction bid of close to $1.1 million, to install cured-in-place pipe liners in about 9,200 feet of city sewer pipe.

The engineer’s estimate for construction costs was $1.28 million, according to agenda materials at Tuesday’s council meeting.

“These are all pipe systems that we know that we’re not going to reconstruct for the next 10 to 20 years, and some of them have some pretty critical issues that we want to address,” Anderson said.

Some of the affected sewer lines were in areas where the city did not want to tear up the streets, so a trenchless repair method like CIPP would be a good fit.

“Some of the other pipe segments are in back yards, where there would be tremendous disruption to a lot of residents.”

The city council had approved a roughly $130,000 engineering agreement for the project in October.

Locations that would be lined included sewers on Elm Street, College Drive, Walnut Street, a location at the city wastewater plant, and some sewer lines that went through back yards in the neighborhoods around Robert Street, Lawrence Street, Viking Drive, and Roosevelt Street.

“This is roughly 9,200 feet of sewer pipes that we’re proposing to line,” Anderson said. The pipes varied in size from 8 to 30 inches in diameter, he said.

The city went out for bids on the project in January. They received three bids, with the apparent low bid coming from SAK Construction, LLC, of Missouri. The SAK Construction bid came to $1,099,911, including a base bid of about $1.03 million and an alternate bid of $66,750.

“We had really good prices for this, by the foot,” Anderson said.

“We would also like consideration for adding a couple segments of pipe, one near the main lift station that we’re renovating this year, and maybe a couple others in our system,” Anderson said. The additional work could be done within the 5% contingency budget for the project.

Council members voted to accept the SAK Construction bid and 5% contingencies to do additional work.