GBRA UPDATE ON DAM AND SPILL GATE REPLACEMENT

Update from Charles Hickman (GBRA) re Lake Placid Spillgate Replacement The latest update on the USACE permitting process is that GBRA received a draft Programmatic Agreement from the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on July 22nd. This completed step 1 of the process outlined below that we previously provided to you. We are now in the 30 day public & stakeholder comment period outlined as Step 2. We’re in a holding pattern until the comment period ends on August 25th. We have also obtained GBRA board approval for issuing a Request for Proposals to select a gate manufacturer for the project and have been working to put the finishing touches on the contract documents. We are planning to begin the bid process by the end of the week and have the bid process open for about 30 days. 1. USACE/THC develop draft Programmatic Agreement (PA) – ??? a. USACE develops this draft document to kickoff the process. The document will contain information about the projects but will not recommend any mitigation. The section on mitigation is left blank for the project stakeholders to provide input. This was the part where USACE was the most ambiguous on timing. They said they would try to get the first draft PA done within 30 days but there are a lot of projects in the queue before us and several vacations for key staff coming up, so it could take longer. 2. Stakeholder Comment on draft Programmatic Agreement (PA) – 30 days a. The draft PA goes out to local, state, and federal stakeholders for their review. At this phase the stakeholders will suggest the historical mitigation will be required and formalize it into the PA. The federal stakeholders are USACE and the Advisory Council on Historical Preservation (ACHP). The state stakeholders include the Texas Historical Commission (THC). THC mentioned they are very short staffed and likely take all the time they are allotted to respond. THC recommends the local stakeholders for inclusion and the ones they mentioned they are likely to include are the Guadalupe County Historic Preservation Officer, the Seguin Landmark Commission, and any local Seguin Historical societies. 3. USACE 2nd draft Programmatic Agreement (PA) – 30 days??? a. This is where the USACE and THC will write the historical mitigation requirements into the PA. The historical mitigation placed in the PA is determined solely by USACE/THC and will consider the stakeholder input. We don't have any documentation to suggest what procedures they will require in the PA making the timing very uncertain, so this task has a significant risk of taking longer than the 30 days outlined. We are basing the 30 days on how long this took for Dunlap, where they ended up requiring GBRA to prepare a historical report concurrent with the construction project. 4. MOA signature by local/state/federal stakeholders – 30 days a. There is a good deal of uncertainty on the timing of this task as well because the entities also have the opportunity to provide further comments on the PA at this phase in lieu of signing the document, which would trigger a 3rd draft and another round of review. This did not occur for the Dunlap project. 5. USACE formal permit approval – 2 weeks 6. GBRA advertises Request for Proposals with final USACE requirements – 2 weeks 7. Bid Phase – 60 days a. We will be allowing the contractors 60 days to prepare bids. We have had discussions with contractors that declined to bid Dunlap because the 30 day bid period was too short for them. 8. Contractor Evaluation/Award – 30 days a. This is the time to review proposals, interview top ranked contractors, and sign contract documents. 9. TWDB Approval & Issue NTP – 30 days a. To meet the requirements of the loan, TWDB must review the fully executed contract documents and provide GBRA authorization to issue a notice to proceed to the contractor before work can begin. This took longer for Dunlap but we are targeting 30 days for this project.