Fayetteville officials will ask for new bids on a drainage improvement project designed to reduce flooding in the Wedgewood/Wyngate, Paces Drive area.

This time, City Council members have suggested that city engineer Don Easterbrook look away from the metropolitan Atlanta area for companies qualified to do the work.

"These bids here, they're preposterous," said Councilman Kenneth Steele during a recent City Council retreat.

The city had budgeted $90,000 for the project, but the lowest bid was $195,161, Easterbrook told council in a recent memo.

Councilmen suggested companies in counties south of Fayette experiencing less growth might be hungrier, and might submit lower bids.

According to Easterbrook, the project includes work in three separate locations:

Catch basin and storm sewer improvements on Wedgewood Drive to relieve flooding of the street and an adjacent yard and driveway;

Storm sewer and storm water detention pond improvements in and near Wyngate subdivision to relieve flooding of a house, and

Construction of either a storm water detention pond or a storm sewer near Paces Drive to relieve flooding of a house.

"Since it is really three separate projects, one or two parts could be done rather than all three," Easterbrook told council members.

Meanwhile, other drainage problems continue to occupy city attention, including flooding along Gingercake Creek.

A $27,000 study has identified five projects that could lower the creek's flood level and reduce flooding all along its banks as it winds through the city, with a total estimated cost of $1.5 million. More projects may be identified as the study continues, Easterbrook said, adding that the city has numerous options. The projects don't all have to be done, and those that are done don't have to be done completely.

Key to those decisions is deciding how much benefit each project will provide measured against how much each costs, said Easterbrook.

Officials hope to get some of the money from a federal hazard mitigation program, but in order to apply for that money, the city must decide which projects it will commit to.

Projects range from dredging a portion of the creek to lowering lake levels nearby when heavy rains are forecast, turning the lakes into catch basins to prevent flooding in the creek.

"The benefit in flood damage costs will come from lowering the flood plain, which will reduce or eliminate damage to structures and furnishings and reduce the number of emergency response calls for things such as sandbagging operations and monitoring creek levels, and from savings in evacuation costs," Easterbrook told the council in a Nov. 3 memo.

City staff will continue to study the problems as part of a long-range process of deciding how the city wants to handle storm water runoff in general.

During the recent retreat meetings, council members discussed various options, including building a storm sewer system.

Councilman Larry Dell suggested working with developers to make sure the detention ponds they build in new subdivisions will handle runoff. "Do an analysis of every detention pond in the city," said Dell. Closer enforcement of standards for detention ponds might help reduce flooding and siltation, he said.