Water quality wasn't a pipe dream

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

By JOHN CASTELLUCCI, Journal Staff Writer

Man behind $45-million water treatment plant to retire

PAWTUCKET -- By now, nobody doubts the need for a new water treatment plant. The $45-million project -- currently under construction on Branch Street -- hasn't generated any controversy since a dispute with the contractor over site conditions was resolved last year.

But in 1998, when Tom Doucette, then acting chief engineer of the Pawtucket water system, broke the news that a new plant was necessary, City Council members were livid.

Never happy to hear that water-system improvements will cost more than expected, council members accused Doucette of lying about the need for a new water treatment plant and ignoring a $300,000 engineering study that said a renovation of the existing plant was all that was required.

Doucette, who is retiring next month, has no regrets.

"You have to make decisions not based on what is easiest, not based on what is politically correct, not based on what is popular, but based on what is right," he said, quoting the Rev. Bob Hess, former president of the University of Notre Dame.

An easygoing man with a soft-spoken demeanor, Doucette said replacing, rather repairing the existing water treatment plant was the right decision because the existing plant is too old and antiquated to meet tough new federal safe drinking-water standards.

The engineering study that recommend repairs, rather than replacement, was commissioned not at his request, Doucette said, but at the request of the Pawtucket Public Building Authority, the five-member board, now defunct, that arranged financing for Water Supply Board projects. Relying on its recommendations, he said, would have been a classic case on throwing good money after bad.

Doucette has two grown sons, and lives with his wife, the former Mary Madden, in Foxboro. He has been assistant chief engineer of the Pawtucket water system since 1995, serving as acting chief engineer from 1997, when the previous chief engineer, Michael J. Woika, left the position, until 1999, when Pamela M. Marchand, the current chief engineer, was hired.

"Tom's been terrific. He was temporary chief engineer before I came on board, so he certainly was of help when I took this position," Marchand said.

The Water Supply Board voted last night to offer the assistant chief engineer's job to James L. DeCelles, one of five candidates for the position. From 1990 to 2000, DeCelles was North Smithfield's sewer and water superintendent. For the past two years, he has been North Attleboro's utilities manager, responsible for the operation and maintenance of the town's water and sewer systems.

No salary was specified. Doucette was paid $74,795 a year.

Doucette developed his lifelong interest in civil engineering when he was a boy in the Hyde Park section of Boston and his neighbor, Rocco Zoppo, a water and sewer contractor, took Doucette and his younger brother, Phil, out on jobs. "He was a real gentleman," Doucette said of Zoppo. "He never had a bad word to say to anybody."

Zoppo died in 1985 at age 90. The company he ran out of his house in Boston, the R. Zoppo Corp., is now operated by his grandsons, Richard and David Zoppo, in Stoughton, Mass.

Doucette earned a civil engineering degree at Northeastern University, graduating in 1960. His first job was with Camp, Dresser & McKee, the engineering firm founded in 1947 in Cambridge, Mass., as a three-person company that now has 3,600 employees around the world.

When he was hired, two of the founders, Thomas R. Camp and Herman G. Dresser, were still alive and active in the company. "Tells you how old I am," Doucette, who is 67, said.

"Herman Dresser used to interview everybody who worked for the company," Doucette said. He did it personally, without input from a human resources director or help from a secretary. When Doucette received a telephone call to come in for the interview, it was Dresser himself on the line.

Dresser grilled Doucette about his knowledge of engineering and professional background, then had him write a paragraph on some engineering topic of his choosing. The paragraph had to be hand-lettered.

Doucette, like all engineers, was expected to be trained in mechanical drawing. Dresser was checking to see whether he could write intelligently, Doucette said, and print the words legibly on set of plans.