Numbers for city’s water plant finally crunched

Woonsocket reaches deal for roughly $56.8M on new treatment facility

WOONSOCKET — After more than a year of study and negotiations, the city has reached an agreement with a global engineering partnership to build a new water treatment plant for roughly $56.8 million – the biggest public utilities job in years.

The figure, disclosed by the city for the first time on Friday, does not include the privatization of plant operations – also part of the bid. That could cost anywhere from $1.9 million a year – roughly the same as it costs the city to run the existing plant – to about $2.2 million. Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino says it depends on whether the state Department of Health requires ’round-the-clock staffing at the plant. “We’re still waiting for a ruling on that issue,” he said. If all goes according to plan, the City Council will vote on the prospective deal with Woonsocket Water Services LLC – a joint venture of AECOM Technical Services and Suez Water Inc. – on Monday. WWS is one of three companies that bid on the replacement of the antiquated Hamman Water Treatment Plant on Manville Road – a project the state Department of Environmental Management ordered the city to initiate nearly a decade ago.

With the aid of a team of outside legal, financial and

“This is probably one of the biggest projects a community can take on. We’re proud of the fact that we’ve brought it to this point.” —Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt

engineering consultants, D’Agostino has been evaluating the bids since the city received them in early 2016. The other bidders were Veolia Water North America-Northeast, a company that used to run the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and CH2M Hill – a company that runs it now.

Woonsocket Water Services LLC “came in very competitive on price” but qualifications and experience were also important factors for the bid review team, said D’Agostino. He also had an opportunity to visit an architectural carbon copy of the proposed Jillson Avenue plant, built by the AECOM-Suez partnership, that’s been operating in Portsmouth for several years.

The Portsmouth plant, he said, was built on the same sort of challenging topography as Jillson Avenue.

“They built on ledge. They built on a hill,” said D’Agostino. “The facility looked impeccable. I was lucky to have a facility in the area that I was able to go see. The other bidders were not able to provide that opportunity.”

The cost of the plant, to be borne by ratepayers, has been the subject of much speculation in the past. A few years ago officials typically projected the cost to be in the range of $30-40 million.

But D’Agostino says the project would have cost less if the city had responded to DEM’s orders to replace the existing water treatment plant in a more timely fashion. The city entered the first of two consent agreements with DEM to replace the plant in 2008, but officials had been in discussions with regulators about problems with the facility since 2002, he said.

He says Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt should be praised for getting the job to the starting line.

“This is probably one of the biggest projects a community can take on,” Baldelli-Hunt said. “We’re proud of the fact that we’ve brought it to this point. Once again, however, this is an example of a project that could have been done years ago.”

DEM wants the Hamman Road Water Treatment Plant shut down because it employs obsolete technology that requires the sludgy byproducts of water purification to be discharged into the Blackstone River. Known as filter backwash, the soupy, coffee-colored discharge is harmful to fish and other creatures that depend on the river for survival, the regulators say.

Since the original consent degree, DEM has invoked – and repeatedly modified – multiple deadlines for compliance. The latest calls for the new plant to be operational by the end of 2019, according to D’Agostino.

The bid documents released by the city indicate that WWS wants to start construction no later than Dec. 31, 2018, but the date is not cast in stone, the public works director said. The city accorded the company some flexibility to receive the necessary permits from state regulators, including DEM and DOH.

The bids – each of which is hundreds of pages long – have been vetted for months by the environmental law firm Burns & Levinson; accountants Bacon & Edge; and consulting engineers Camp Dresser McKee Smith. The city has already spent over $2 million on various procurement costs.

The plant would be built on a parcel of about 20 acres off Jillson Avenue, and a new pump station would be built not far from the existing water plant on Manville Road.

Costs are separated for construction and operation because the city bid the project as a DBO, which stands for design-build-operate. That’s the same model the city has followed for running the Woonsocket Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant since the 1990s and involves using one company for construction and operation of the plant for a fixed term – in this case, 20 years.

Currently, about 30 percent of the design work on the plant has been completed. If the council approves the contract, WWS would complete the plans and submit them to DEM and DOH for approval, according to D’Agostino.

The City Council was briefed on the contract in a workshop earlier this month and is on track to take a vote on Monday, said Council President Dan Gendron.

“My intent is to vote on it,” he said.