By Justin Roshak, Contributing Writer
(Photo/Dakota Antelman)
HUDSON – The Hudson Select Board voted to change water testing providers, Aug. 9, after a firm originally set to provide services backed out of a signed contract.
The contract would have covered regular water testing and reporting services from July 1 of this year to June 30, 2022.
The work was put out to bid last year. Multiple companies responded, with Eurofins Eaton Analytical of South Bend, Indiana offering the lowest qualifying bid at $60,590.
The Select Board approved the contract with Eurofins.
In the week before Aug. 9, however, the company reached out to Hudson officials.
“Eric Ryder let me know that he received a letter from the contractor stating that the contractor could not fulfil the obligations of the contract,” Executive Assistant Thomas Gregory told the Select Board.
He asked the Select Board to grant the water testing contract to its next lowest bidder, Pace Analytical Services of Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
The new contract award, for $61,436, was unanimously approved by the Select Board.
(Photo/Dakota Antelman)
In its letter, Eurofin’s representative attributed the need to cancel its contract to the difficulty of conducting lab tests for total coliform, a class of bacteria found in human waste and soil.
“Due to the holding time challenges with Total Coliform, it is best that Hudson Water find a laboratory that is logistically better equipped to handle the short holding times of that test,” Eurofin wrote.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires that a sample be tested within a certain time period of collection. For coliforms, that benchmark is 30 hours when testing drinking water samples. It is only eight hours for source water compliance samples
The letter did not specify why Eurofin was unable to handle the logistics.
If, for any reason, Pace is unable to fulfil the contract, four other bids are also on file at price points between $71,686 and $98,995.
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