Bend officials say the Two Bulls Fire was only a temporary setback for two major construction projects, a new municipal water pipeline and water filtration plant west of the city.

City Councilor Scott Ramsay said Tuesday it appears contractors will be able to return to the work sites, in the vicinity of Skyliners Road, within a couple of days.

“I’m so thankful that the fire crews got on top of that western fire line as quickly as they did, knowing that it was closest to the treatment plant, because we were within a mile of a real bad situation,” Ramsay said. “For a day or so, I was really sweating it that we were going to have some serious burn through at our treatment plant. It could have gone really sideways.”

There is no official estimate of when Skyliners Road will reopen, Capt. Shane Nelson with the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. “We continually review it after we brief with the fire officials,” Nelson said.

The new Bridge Creek water project west of Bend will cost an estimated $62.5 million. The price tag includes an estimated $24 million for the new pipeline and water intake equipment and up to $33.5 million to complete a water filtration plant, on top of at least $5 million the city spent on the filtration project design as of fall 2013.

The contractor for the pipeline project, M.A. Mortenson Construction, was “a little ahead of schedule, doing really well,” before the Two Bulls Fire started Saturday, Heidi Lansdowne, a city project manager and principal engineer , said Monday. Although M.A. Mortenson did not expect a wildfire to shut down the project, the contractor did build inclement weather delays into its schedule.

“They’re doing about 300 to 400 feet (of pipe installation) a day,” Lansdowne said. “They were going to pave (a section of Skyliners Road today), which means their second mile of paving.”

Lansdowne said the city and contractor hoped it would only be necessary to keep Skyliners Road closed a few more days. “We’re completely shut off,” Lansdowne said. “Nobody gets to go up that road, not our contractor, nobody. They’ve rescheduled the paving for next week.”

M.A. Mortenson moved most of its construction equipment down to William E. Miller Elementary, with the exception of two large, slow-moving excavators that must be transported on lowboy trailers. The excavators are sitting near the end of Skyliners Road, along with 400 feet of steel pipe, laid out along the road.

The fire is much closer to the Outback Water Treatment Plant, where the city recently broke ground for a new water filtration plant. The city was still identifying all the pipelines running through the project site when the fire began Saturday.

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, hborrud@bendbulletin.com