Noisy
pumps causing concerns
01:00
AM EDT on Tuesday, July 3, 2007
By John Castellucci
Journal
Staff Writer
PAWTUCKET — Noise coming from pumps
installed to draw water from the city’s reservoirs is causing yet another delay
in the much-delayed water treatment plant project.
The noise, which one official said
sounds like rattling marbles, is evidence of a malfunction that could lead to a
complete breakdown of the pumping system, Water Supply Board officials said.
As long as the noise continues, the
Water Supply Board is refusing to accept notification from Earth Tech that the
$46.1-million plant is substantially complete.
The project is already more than a
year behind schedule.
The Water Supply Board’s refusal to
accept notice of substantial completion has drawn a protest from Earth Tech,
the engineering company hired to design, build and operate the new water
treatment plant,
“We see no effect on the system in
spite of the noise,” Frank Pollare, vice president of
corporate communications for Earth Tech, said from the company’s headquarters
in Long Beach, Calif.
The manufacturer of the pumps, the
Patterson Pipe Company in Toccoa, Ga., has assured
Earth Tech that, despite the noise, the pumps can be operated safely, Pollare said.
Nevertheless, the Water Supply Board
has refused to accept Earth Tech’s notice of substantial completion, Pollare said, delaying the extensive series of tests
required to determine whether the plant is capable of producing water that’s
safe to drink.
The pumps are in the two-story
building that Earth Tech constructed at the mouth of Happy Hollow Pond in
Cumberland, the last link in the chain of reservoirs that make up the Pawtucket
water system.
The pumps’ job is to move water from
Happy Hollow Pond into the three-foot-diameter pipe built to carry untreated
drinking water to the new treatment plant, which has gone up behind Water
Supply Board headquarters on Branch Street in Pawtucket.
The three pumps are “crucial,” James
L. DeCelles, the water board’s acting chief engineer, said, because, without
them the treatment plant will have no untreated water source.
“The noise is the issue,”
source water manager Allen Champagne said, because officials fear whatever is
making it “will eventually cause damage to the pumps.”
The pumps have been shut down. Steve
Cochran, service manager for the Patterson Pump Co., said that the company has
determined that the noise is harmless.
Cochran said the noise is being
caused by air that’s getting into the pumps from the suction piping installed
as part of the treatment plant project. He said that, while he expects that
letters on the subject will exchanged by Earth Tech and Patterson, “We’ve given
the go-ahead to run the pumps.”
But Water Supply Board officials
said they aren’t reassured.
“If you have a car that’s knocking,
are you going to be happy when the dealer says, ‘Well, call me when the pistons
come through’?” said city Finance Director Ronald L. Wunschel,
who sits ex officio as a water board member.
Wunschel said the water board plans to meet next week to discuss the
matter. In the meantime, he said, Earth Tech is facing substantial penalties
for failing to complete the treatment plant on time.
Although the company, a subsidiary
of Tyco International, has been paid for design and construction, it will not
be paid to operate the plant, Wunschel said, until
the project is finished.
The project was supposed to be
finished in March 2006. A series of factors, including contaminated soil and a
shortage of stainless steel, delayed the completion date to the end of last
month.
Under the terms of an agreement that
Earth Tech reached with the Water Supply Board in mid-February, the company
faces a penalty of $10,000 a day for every day that goes by after the June
completion date, up to a maximum of $250,000. Water Supply Board officials said
yesterday that no new completion date has been set.
Pawtucket