Operations Management International, the private operator of the city’s wastewater treatment plant for the past decade, will likely be gone by the end of the year.

The Augusta Commission put the job up for bid in October, rather than paying a consulting firm nearly $74,000 to determine if the Utilities department was ready to run the plant itself.

Proposals were due Monday, and the Procurement department worked into the night, Director Geri Sams said, narrowing a list of vendors down to three.

OMI didn’t make the cut. According to Procurement documents, six companies submitted bids, and the three on the short list are Duluth, Ga.-based ESG Operations Inc., Houston-based Severn Trent Environmental Services Inc., and Harrington Park, N.J.-based United Water Services Inc. The Utilities department doesn’t appear to have submitted a bid.

Ms. Sams would not say why OMI was passed over. A vendor chart shows it was not because of a lack of documentation. Bid dollar amounts won’t be available until the contract is awarded.

A subsidiary of the city’s water consulting firm, Colorado-based CH2M Hill, OMI has been credited with getting the J.B. Messerly Wastewater Treatment Plant, off Doug Barnard Parkway, out of hot water with the state Environmental Protection Division.

Before the company was brought in, the city was routinely fined by EPD. In 1999, the city had to pay $160,000 for a series of environmental violations and spills, including a line collapse that backed 1 million gallons of raw sewage into the Savannah River. Before that the city had been issued at least 10 consent and administrative orders for deficiencies dating to 1982 and had paid fines totaling $203,690.

Both OMI’s and CH2M Hills’s contracts end Dec. 31, and both companies have come under fire by some Augusta commissioners this year because CH2M Hill fired its liaison to the city, Tony Johnson, who was specifically named in the contract. During a March closed legal meeting, the commission considered suing CH2M Hill over the breach.

In June, interim Utilities Director Drew Goins sought $1.5 million to keep CH2M Hill on until additions to the wastewater treatment system are finished, scheduled for September 2010. The request was turned down by the commission’s Engineering Services committee.

At the time, Commissioner J.R. Hatney said he couldn't go along with extending CH2M Hill’s work because of the breach of contract issue, even though both Mr. Goins and Commissioner Don Grantham pointed out that bringing another company in to finish the plant renovations could be costly. Mr. Grantham estimated it could cost up to $2 million.

Mr. Hatney, Commissioner Calvin Holland and Mayor Pro Tem Alvin Mason also complained that OMI was supposed to have been training city workers to take over Messerly operations, but hasn’t done so.

Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com