Salina Says It Needs 3.5 Miles of New Water Main a Year. The 2026 Project Does About 1.1.
The City of Salina shared the bid tabulation for Project No. 26017 — 2026 Water Main Replacement with Salina311 on Sept. 15, providing a new look at what the city is paying to replace aging water infrastructure and how much pipe the 2026 project will actually replace.
The records show the city's major 2026 water-main replacement project will replace roughly 1.1 miles of main, about one-third of the annual replacement pace city officials say Salina should be reaching.
The 2026 Water Main Replacement project is divided into three areas. Plans call for approximately 1,725 feet of six-inch main on Dover, 3,165 feet along 10th and 11th streets and 750 feet on Larson. Small sections of connecting pipe are also included.
Combined, the three primary sections total 5,640 feet — approximately 1.07 miles.
The work goes beyond the pipe itself. The project includes new fire hydrants, valves, residential water services, meter pits, traffic control, site restoration and other associated work.
The City Commission awarded the project Aug. 24. The bid tabulation identifies Diehl Construction as the low bidder.
Four contractor bids submitted
The bid records also show a substantial range in what contractors proposed to complete all three phases of the project.
The city's engineer estimated the project at $2,243,225. The four contractor bids were:
Diehl Enterprises — $2,059,778
Nowak Construction Co., Inc. — $2,304,572
Smoky Hill, LLC — $2,467,215
Mies Construction Inc. — $3,756,298
The lowest contractor bid came in about $183,447 below the engineer's estimate, while the highest was about $1.51 million above it.
The bids also varied significantly by phase.
For Dover, bids ranged from $594,505 to $1.27 million. For the 10th and 11th Street phase, they ranged from approximately $1.06 million to $2.01 million. Larson ranged from approximately $332,608 to $479,720 among the contractor bids.
Salina's replacement rate
The significance of those numbers becomes clearer when compared with what Salina's Utilities Department has previously said about the city's water system.
Utilities Director Martha Tasker previously told Salina311 that from 2021 through 2026, Salina executed agreements to replace 13.06 miles of water main.
Tasker said the American Water Works Association recommends replacing approximately 1% of a water distribution system annually. For Salina, that translates to approximately 3.5 miles of water main each year.
At that rate, Salina would replace about 21 miles over six years. The 13.06 miles contracted since 2021 represents about 62% of that pace.
The 2026 project illustrates the continuing gap. Its roughly 1.1 miles of primary replacement represents less than one-third of the 3.5-mile annual benchmark cited by the Utilities Department.
Cost of replacement has climbed
The issue is not simply how much pipe the city replaces. It is also how much that replacement now costs.
Tasker previously told Salina311 that water-main replacement costs increased from approximately $388,100 per mile before the COVID-19 pandemic to approximately $1.907 million per mile, nearly five times the previous cost.
The 2026 bids show how widely individual costs can vary.
For the largest section — 3,165 feet of six-inch water main along 10th and 11th streets — contractors priced the pipeline itself from $122.50 to $260 per linear foot. That does not include hydrants, valves, residential services, meter work, restoration or traffic control.
At the approximately $1.907 million-per-mile figure previously provided by Tasker, reaching a 3.5-mile annual replacement pace would equate to roughly $6.7 million per year if costs remained at that level.
That is a rough calculation rather than an adopted city spending figure. Actual costs vary by the location, size and complexity of each project.
City staff has proposed increasing water-main funding in the 2027 budget in an effort to reach the 3.5-mile annual replacement level.
The latest bid records illustrate the scale of that challenge: even a project costing more than $2 million replaces only about one mile of Salina's water-main system.
