Holly Scrap Recap

Not a moment too soon, City Council could vote today (Thursday, May 12) on whether to tap TRC Environmental Corp. for the Holly Street Power Plant demolition project. The on-again, off-again item returns to the agenda following Tuesday's work session during which TRC reps appeared before council to explain how they dropped their bid price from $24.9 million last year to $11.5 million this year. It's unusual for firms to drop their price by more than half, so council members had several questions relating to how exactly TRC managed to swing so low in the second round of bids. Going over several line-by-line points relating to cost-whittling measures, TRC focused a good bit of its discussion on the global volatility of the scrap market, providing council members with a crash course on this little-known billion-dollar industry. "There's this whole world economy that we rely on to price scrap," said Scott State, CEO of LVI Services, a major TRC subcontractor on demolition projects. After getting sufficiently saturated with market minutia, Mayor Lee Leffingwell put a lid on the discussion. "Any more questions about the worldwide price of scrap?" he asked with a hint of a smile.