MARSHALL — Last spring’s wet weather forced some changes to a repair project on Lyon County Ditch 14. But while that meant some additional costs for drainage and excavation, engineers told County Commissioners that there were also some parts of the project where there was less spending than planned.

“There were also other bid items in the project that we underran or didn’t use,” said Shaun Luker, with engineering firm Bolton & Menk.

After hearing an update on the CD 14 repair project this week, commissioners approved a change order that was an increase of about $137,000. The original bid for the project, from Cooreman Contracting of Tracy, was about $811,560.

The CD 14 project included replacing drainage tile lines that were in disrepair, as well as building water retention structures.

“We had a very good experience with this project,” said Lyon County Soil and Water Administrator John Biren. But wet conditions ended up forcing some changes to the plans.

“This originally was going to be an improvement, and we were looking at putting in two 36-inch (drainage) tiles, one to replace the existing tile, and then one offset to parallel it, that was deeper,” Luker said. “Just given the amount of rain and the wet spring that we had, we couldn’t put the new repair tile in to replace the existing tile.”

“We had to keep that existing tile in place just to provide what limited drainage it had, because it was such a wet spring. And so we offset the repaired tile about 20 to 30 feet away from the existing tile,” Luker said. Moving that 20 to 30 feet meant excavating deeper and moving more dirt than anticipated.

Plus, there was also additional de-watering that had to be done on the project, and some heavier-duty pipe had to be put in, he said. “So there’s some additional costs there.”

The change order would be an increase of $136,939. But so far spending on the ditch project had not reached the full $811,560 bid amount. Luker said the total cost of completed work to date was about $775,000 before the change order.