The City of Powell is incurring some unexpected expenses after a sewer line at the city shop failed.

Following a series of sewage backups at the East Fourth Street facility, City Administrator Zack Thorington said staff inserted a camera into the shop’s sewer line and discovered it had “pretty much collapsed.”

“We’re kind of at a loss there,” Thorington said at the Powell City Council’s Aug. 18 meeting. “They keep spending their time and energy cleaning it out, or trying to flush it out, and it’s not doing very well.”

The council unanimously agreed to pay a local contractor $32,500 to rip out the old line and install a new one. The work includes tearing up the concrete floor in and around the shop’s bathrooms, then putting in a new floor and plumbing.

“I don’t know how we can not do it,” Mayor John Wetzel said.

The city’s budget for the current fiscal year will have to be amended to include the project, as “we didn’t seem to have a major problem” when the budget was composed in the spring, Thorington said.

State law didn’t require formal bids for the work, but he told the council that staff obtained several quotes. In a follow-up email to the Tribune, Thorington said three contractors looked at the project. One felt the job was too big for him to tackle on his own, another verbally estimated the work would cost $40,000, while Garrison Construction LLC provided a written quote of $32,500 and was selected, Thorington said.

The city plans to eventually replace its shop, which is just west of Homesteader Park. The building was constructed in the mid-1950s and has a leaking roof, poor insulation, an outdated electrical system and is too small for some of the city’s modern equipment, Thorington has previously said. It also was built on top of a sewer main, which has led to bad smells.

A local architect completed the design for a new shop in 2023, but Thorington said it “could be years” before the city finds the funding to actually build it.

Even after a new shop is constructed, the city intends to continue using the old one alongside it, so the current sewer upgrades won’t go to waste.