FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The city approved a $260,000 bid for emergency contracts to repair the gully near Fairhope’s sewer treatment plan on North Section Street that washed out during the historic April 29 rainstorm.

The city awarded the bid to Spanish Fort-based Ammons & Blackmon, the only contractor out of five to bid on the project, according to Hutchinson, Moore & Rauch’s Scott Hutchinson. The council recently hired HMR to design a repair plan for the project at a cost of $37,000.

The contract was split into two parts so that the National Resources Conservation Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would cover most of the cost. The NRCS will cover 75 percent of the $192,696.80 cost needed to repair the gully erosion near the sewer plant, while the city will pay the remaining 25 percent. FEMA will pay 75 percent of the $66,520.20 needed to repair the damaged portion of North Section Street near Fairhope Colony Cemetery. The state and city will each cover 12.5 percent of that cost.

The project was originally bid as one project, but the NRCS would only agree to cover the portion near the sewer plant. Hutchinson said a FEMA representative asked that the project be broken into two parts so that they could cover the repairs to North Section Street.

“We did not rebid it that way,” Hutchinson said at Monday’s city council meeting. “We simply took the project and I split up the unit prices accordingly. The lump sum items I left blank and let the contractor come in and split them up so that it is all above board. The dollar amount equals, to the penny, the original amount.”

Hutchinson said that HMR has proof that five different contractors received the bid package but only one, Ammons & Blackmon submitted a bid.

Council President Jack Burrell asked Hutchinson if the one bid was satisfactory and if the city should be concerned that only one contractor bid on the contract.

“The bid was open publicly and given to five contractors, four of them ‘no-bid’ just because of the short notice,” Hutchinson said. “The time frame involved is really short. With the NRCS paying for it they put a 10-day window on it…That probably scared some people off.”

The city also hired Preble-Rish for $44,760 to design plans to replace the sewer line and lift station on the east side of U.S. 98.