By CRAIG FREILICH

North Country This Week

POTSDAM – The engineering firm overseeing the village’s $17 million wastewater treatment plant project says the work is 60 percent complete and two-thirds of the money has been spent.

Matt Cooper, senior managing engineer at Barton and Loguidice, also said that of $1.2 million in contingency funds allotted for the project, $1.1 million remains, and expects there will be enough for the village to assign some of it to elements of the project that had not been foreseen before work began. Or the village might opt not to spend the contingency funds and lower the total cost.

Cooper said not spending the money would only result in a savings of $7 per year per user over the course of repaying the loan portion of the funding, and suggested the village might want to look at possible improvements that could be made.

It has been two years since the design of the project was done, Cooper said, and some beneficial improvements might be found, he told trustees at their meeting Monday night.

Village Administrator Greg Thompson said they had just begun discussion of that. He asked Superintendent of Public Works Jim Corbett if he had anything in mind for such a “wish list,” and he said a pressure main across the Raquette River that is part of the system was a possibility.

Thompson said officials would continue their discussion of the idea and could have specific recommendations in about a month.

Some of the unforeseen expenses in the course of construction so far include bedrock excavation that was more difficult than expected, some electronics, and old piping that failed, but those were relatively minor expenses, it was explained.