• The City's procurement regulations require all professional services contracts in excess of $300,000 be approved by City Council. Extending the current contract will bring the total amount to $533,158
• Vancouver’s Surface Water Management team oversees a long-term water quality monitoring program and utilizes the environmental data to identify areas for targeted stormwater improvement projects, determine educational outreach needs, and to demonstrate compliance with state water quality standards.
• The current contract for water quality monitoring in the Burnt Bridge Creek watershed covers data collection from October 2019 through September 2021. Extending the contract for two additional water years (October 2021 through September 2023) would provide a consistent dataset for trend analysis and provide feedback for adaptive strategies in stormwater management.
• Staff is requesting an increase of $277,624 to the professional services contract for a total of $533,158 to support on-going collection of high-quality data.
• Staff is also requesting implementing the optional two-year extension to February 15, 2024.

Goal 1, Objective 1.2: Ensure our infrastructure, including buildings and utilities, is safe, environmentally responsible and well maintained.

The City currently contracts with Herrera Environmental Inc. to conduct water quality monitoring in the Burnt Bridge Creek watershed. The monitoring schedule follows the USGS water-year from October 1 through September 30. The contract includes data review and analysis and a final technical report due in January following the second year of monitoring. The current contract will end January 2022 for data collected September 2019 – October 2021.

To provide for seamless data collection into the next two-year monitoring cycle, staff is requesting an increase of the professional services contract to $533,158 to support current and future stormwater management activities by extending the contract through February 15, 2024. This requested increased amount is approved in the Surface Water capital budget.

1. Extending the contract will ensure that the long-term monitoring program will continue to receive scientifically reliable water quality data into the next two water-year cycle and will allow continued use of software and equipment already purchased.
2. Increasing the contract will allow the City to retain a consultant team with in-depth knowledge of our watersheds for collection and analysis of data to support targeted Surface Water Management capital improvement projects.