Colorado Springs Utilities is about to sign a multimillion-dollar deal with one of its long-term contractors to oversee the $2.3 billion Southern Delivery System.

The contractor, MWH, a Broomfield-based company that has water projects throughout the world, will receive $6 million to $7 million a year to provide program management services for the 62-mile pipeline, Janet Rummel, a spokeswoman for Utilities confirmed in an e-mail this week.

MWH, a privately held company, is not unfamiliar with the pipeline. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation hired the firm through a competitive bid process to do much of the environmental work on SDS’s Environmental Impact Statement, an exhaustive document required by federal law for all projects that impact the environment.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the proponents of the projects have to pay for the studies. So CSU paid $9.2 million to MWH for the work on the EIS, Rummel confirmed.

Don Schley, a professor of project management at Colorado Technical University and a longtime critic of the project, said the selection of MWH as the SDS program manager amounts to a “reward” to MWH for its work on the Environmental Impact Statement.

The five-year environmental review, which involved numerous public hearings,written commentary and analysis, resulted in a voluminous report and approval of the project.

 “MWH was under contract for one element of SDS project when they accepted the contract from Bureau of Reclamation to do the Environmental Impact Statement,” Schley said. “By law, the people who do that work have to be objective. You can look at the skewed nature of many of MWH’s reports and see they weren’t telling the truth. Their reward for this is that they become the prime contractor on the SDS project.”

John Fredell, SDS project director, defended the decision Thursday, saying Utilities spent six months selecting a program manager. “Two independent review panels separately concluded that MWH was the clear leader from both a technical and cost standpoint — offering the best value to our customers.”

William Van Derveer, an MWH environmental scientist and manager of the Colorado Springs office, said in a brief interview Thursday that he will be MWH’s deputy program manager on the SDS project.

Van Derveer confirmed that he was also project manager for the EIS and worked for Utilities from 1994 until 2001. Van Derveer said his familiarity with SDS will help “advance” the pipeline project.

Under the terms of the contract, which is still being worked on, MWH will receive not only an hourly rate, but also reimbursement for overhead costs and a fee that will be connected to performance.

Rummel said the hourly rates charged by MWH employees will be dependent on their jobs and experience. “The lead MWH person assigned to the SDS project office will bill at approximately $200 an hour,” she said.

MWH has had done other work for Utilities. According to CSU’s Rummel, the work includes:

• $1.4 million from Utilities for preliminary work on the Clear Spring Ranch Regional Reclamation facility. That project was canceled, and Banning-Lewis Ranch reimbursed Utilities for the $1.4 million.

• $20 million to serve as engineer for the Sanitary Sewer Evaluation, Repair and Rehabilitation project. The contract began in 2002 and terminates in 2012.

• $25,000 for troubleshooting assistance related to the J.D. Phillips Water Reclamation Facility and the Las Vegas Wastewater Treatment Facility. The contract runs from January 2009 through December 2010.

• $93,000 for general water resources planning and technical support for water yield modeling. The contract runs from April 2009 to December 2010.

—Call the writer at 476-4825.

Ashley Small, who was in the chancellor’s leadership class, is among the first group of Kane Scholarship winners graduating from UCCS. The ceremony is Friday at the World Arena. Photo by JERILEE BENNETT/The Gazette