Lift station project in limbo

The $9.5 million lift-station project in Luke Wood Park has been mostly sitting idle since March, when the equipment used to drill underground tunnels for new pipes was removed from the site.

City attorney Robert Fournier informed the Sarasota City Commission at a special meeting Tuesday, July 10 that the project, dubbed Lift Station 87, is at a standstill and is off schedule. The project was supposed to be completed by December 2011.

“The contractor has had a lot of difficulty with a micro-tunneling procedure under Hudson Bayou and the surrounding area,” Fournier said.

The equipment being used to dig tunnels for new pipes that will connect to a new lift station was removed months ago. Although the lift station construction is 80% complete, the digging and installation of the pipes that connect to the lift station are months behind schedule.

“The city has some reason to believe the means and methods of construction used by the contractor were not suitable in some way,” Fournier said. “No one is talking a lawsuit yet, but we would like someone from the outside with no dog in this fight to give us an opinion.”

Commissioners agreed with Fournier’s assessment to hire a legal attorney at a cost of $400 per hour that will cost the city $8,000 to $10,000 to look into legal ramifications involved with the project. A micro-tunneling expert from the United Kingdom will also be hired at a cost of $400 per hour. His estimate to perform a report on the city’s drilling problems will cost approximately $18,000, and the city must pay his estimated $6,500 travel expenses.

The goal is to have both a legal and drilling report done in a couple of months, while the city also moves forward with allowing the contractor to bring in a larger drilling machine to see if that solves the problem and jumpstarts the project.

Fournier said the contractor believes there’s an issue with the soil and the unforeseen conditions mean the extra work is the city’s financial responsibility. The city believes some failed attempts were a result of the contractor not using the equipment correctly and digging some trenches with incorrect measurements.

“We want to know what the problem actually is,” Fournier said. “It’s either the type of pipe, the soil, the machine, how the procedure was performed or a combination of those.”

Deputy City Manager Marlon Brown said the city will bear the cost for upgrading the machine for a test run and the cost of mobilizing on-site to see if it works, although the contractor has yet to provide an estimate for the new machine’s cost. If the machine works, the contractor has agreed to pay the additional cost to use the larger machine.

Although pipes from north of Hudson Bayou to the lift station have been completed, approximately 400 feet of pipe to the south of the bayou has yet to be installed.

Interim City Utilities Director Bill Hallisey warned that the contractor is incurring costs on a daily basis to keep much of its equipment on-site, including metal sheeting that’s holding up pits dug to perform the work. The contractor, Hallisey said, will most likely submit those costs, in an attempt to seek reimbursement from the city.

On Wednesday, Hallisey confirmed his department is working with the contractor to determine if there’s enough room in the interim to open a portion of the southbound lane of Osprey Avenue that’s been closed to thru traffic.

“If there’s enough room and it’s deemed safe, we will open the road for the time being until construction starts again,” said Hallisey, who believes a decision on the road could be made by the end of the week.