By the end of this year or the beginning of 2012, work should begin in earnest for the new Bowling Green Municipal Utilities facility.

An $11 million bond sale was completed for the project Dec. 14, providing an unexpectedly low interest rate, according to BGMU General Manager Mark Iverson.

“Given the indicators that we had seen, we expected it to be about 3.25 percent,” Iverson said. “But we ended up getting 2.86 percent. We are very pleased.”

Iverson said bond rates have already gone up since the sale.

“So we timed it just right,” he said.

Ross, Sinclaire & Associates, with offices in nine states, including Kentucky, had the winning bids for the bonds, which will be repaid over 20 years.

Iverson said BGMU officials had a preconstruction meeting Thursday with Scott, Murphy and Daniel construction company to discuss how the project is going to proceed.

Some work actually occurred this week to beat the closure of the asphalt plant. The rear parking lot was fenced off and the asphalt milled up so it could be taken to the plant and recycled before the plant closed for cold weather, Iverson said.

The first order of business will be earthwork and demolishing a geothermal bed that had been taken out of use several years ago.

For whatever reason, the system slowly began losing efficiency until it wasn’t cost efficient to operate, Iverson said.

But BGMU plans to install a new geothermal system – which have been improved over the years – as part of its efforts to obtain LEED, or Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design, certification.

“We also will do light harvesting with our window placement, and we will use light-colored roofing materials,” he said. “We also started talking about how we can use gray water.”

Gray water is that which runs through sinks, dishwashers, water fountains and other non-sewage related systems.

Once the demolition work is complete, foundation work for the new building will begin.

“We expect the building to be substantially complete by this time next year,” Iverson said. “We won’t be ready to move just then. … We will have to have coordinated work to take out the existing building and the annex.”