The city of Spokane plans to hire a consultant to help it prepare a bid package for a possible U.S. Department of Defense contract to provide water, sewer, and electric service to Fairchild Air Force Base.

The city, which already provides sewer service to the base and has extended additional water lines close to the base, likely would seek to coordinate with another provider to supply electrical power there, says Mike Taylor, the city's director of engineering services.

Currently, Fairchild gets its electricity from Avista Utilities, and provides its own water service. Recently, the DOD issued a solicitation seeking to privatize all those services to the base. The winning bidder would own and maintain the base's equipment and provide utility services to it, the solicitation says.

Taylor says that given the relationship the city has had with Fairchild over the years, it makes sense for the city to consider extending additional services to the base under the privatization contract.

"I like the concept that we've been partners with Fairchild, with our community, philosophically for a long time. They're an integral part of our community," he says.

Taylor says he hopes the city is in a good position to provide such services reliably to the base, and that it will be able to demonstrate it has been providing reliable sewer and water service for 100-plus years. He says the city is most interested in providing what it does best, water and sewer service, but a variety of options are open under the solicitation, including working with another supplier to provide electrical service, for example.

Spokane already is completing a project to extend additional water lines to the West Plains to provide redundant water service to Fairchild and to the residential areas to the east of the base. It also provides sewer service to homes in that area, and is in the process of trying to annex land near the base.

Taylor says once DOD selects a contractor, the transition could take up to about two years.

The planned privatization at the base is part of a bigger DOD initiative to cut costs at bases, Taylor says. Fairchild now is one of a number of bases with privatized housing, which is being provided by Balfour Beatty Communities, a subsidiary of London-based Balfour Beatty PLC.

Adding the base to the city's systems would be a big step, Taylor says.

"It's a fairly good-sized community compared to some other communities in our county, like Deer Park. It would be adding a significant neighborhood to the city's system," he says, adding that the city has plenty of water and sewer capacity to handle the additional demand.

According to the Defense Logistics Agency, which has issued the solicitation for bids, there are about 1,108 family housing units on the main base and 319 units on other property the base owns. Also, up to 2,200 enlisted personnel can live in dormitory spaces on base.

In its privatization solicitations, the DOD says that in fiscal year 2007, Fairchild used about 65.6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The base gets its water supply from a well it operates in the Fort George Wright area. The water must be pumped 11 miles to the base, including an elevation gain of 750 feet. The total on-base pumping capacity is about 6,200 gallons a minute.

Overall, there are about 146,000 linear feet of sewer pipe in the main base area, the DOD says. All lines merge at the far northeast corner of the base, where a single 30-inch concrete pipe carries the discharge to Spokane's sewer system for final treatment and disposal.

Some things would be excluded from the privatization effort, including the base's fire protection systems, equipment located inside facilities, lawn irrigation systems, and military family housing.

Taylor says there are a variety of options for a privatization contract, and the city hopes to select a consultant with experience at securing such contracts.

"We want them to have a track record of putting together successful packages of equal benefit to all parties," he says. Taylor says bids for consulting services were due to the city Sept. 28, and the city expects to award a contract very soon in order to move forward with preparation of the proposal to the military, which is due Dec. 17.

He says he believes there will be competition for the contract, including from other Spokane-area public entities or private companies that have seen the potential in such contracts.

"Definitely lots of folks have found this to be a great place to do business" in the arena of privatized services to the military, Taylor says.