NORWICH — The Norwich Department of Public Works (DPW) is continuing efforts to replace the water mains on South Broad Street and East Main Street.

DPW Superintendent Edward Pepe explained to City of Norwich council members at Tuesday's meeting that they currently do not have funding for the project, but are continuing to look.

"We submitted to Tenney's office, that didn't work out," said Pepe. "Thank you Alderman Jeffrey for pointing me in the direction of Schumer's office cause we were able to apply for that. Haven't heard anything but hopefully that's good news."

Pepe explained that DPW will also be applying for funding through the USDA, and will need to fulfill specific requirements they have in regard to choosing an engineer to design the project.

"Also we're going to apply to the USDA, cause they do a lot of funding for big projects like this. And we need to have an engineer design the project," said Pepe. "So we need to select an engineer through qualifications-based proposal."

He also clarified that a qualifications-based proposal means that the engineer would have to be chosen based on qualifications, rather than on price.

"It means that you select the engineer based on their qualifications, not based on fee proposals. So it's not necessarily the lowest fee, you're going based on who you think the best for the jobs would be," said Pepe.

Even if council members agree to these terms, it does not mean they will move forward immediately, according to Pepe. Rather, it is just the first step in getting the project off the ground.

"So I'd like to request counsel to make a motion that they're going to accept qualifications-based proposals for design of South Broad and East Main water main replacement," said Pepe. "It's not saying we're gonna do it, it's just saying we'll accept qualification-based proposals for that design. That's the first thing we need to do to get the USDA funding on track."

Council members were also interested to know if the DPW had an approximate time frame for the project, which Pepe said is unclear at this time.

"No, I know we talked about in Water Commission about coordinating that with Gus Macker cause we wouldn't want to conflict too much. We'll just have to see. They seem pretty reasonable and scheduling is pretty flexible, so we'll see how it goes," said Pepe.

All council members voted in favor to accept qualification-based proposals for the project design.

The discussion ended on a positive note, with Alderman Brian Doliver saying, "We'll make it work no matter how we do this. We'll work it all out, I'm sure."