Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
City officials blame the breach on an FPL subcontractor.
Answers dribbled in slowly as to who’s at fault for the water main break that left more than 220,000 people high and dry all day Thursday.
Fort Lauderdale officials blamed the breach on Florida Communication Concepts Inc., a subcontractor working for Florida Power & Light. The subcontractor was drilling underground to repair electrical lines when it bore a 6-inch hole into a 42-inch water main, officials said.
The company has existed only since March, according to the state Division of Corporations’ online database.
Reached at a phone number listed to Florida Communication Concepts’ president, Timothy N. Hicks, a man who answered the phone affirmed that his name was Tim, but hung up after a reporter identified himself.
When Hicks’ number was called a second time, the voicemail box was full.
Asked for details about the break, FPL, the company that hired the subcontractor, issued a statement saying only that it was “aware of” and “investigating” the incident and working with the city to respond.
The statement by FPL spokesman Bill Orlove directed all other inquiries to the city.
FPL has a franchise agreement with the city that does not require the utility to get a permit each and every time it digs, Deputy City Manager Rob Hernandez said.
“This was clearly haphazard,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said. “Human error clearly is the cause for this.”
Once repairs are secure, the city will focus on investigating how this break occurred, said Trantalis. He also said the city would not hold back in seeking compensation.
Two construction projects are underway at the city-owned airport property: a $25 million aircraft hangar replacement and expansion project on property leased by Sheltair FXE Northside, and a soccer stadium and training facilities at the former site of Lockhart and Fort Lauderdale stadiums.
City officials said early Thursday that the breach wasn’t connected to the stadium project. Late Thursday afternoon, city spokesman Chaz Adams said he confirmed that FPL was not working on the hangar expansion.
The subcontractor, Florida Communication Concepts, was created on March 21, 2019, and operates out of a residential address, 13453 Doubletree Trail in Wellington, state records show.
The record lists Hicks as the company’s president and Christine K. Hicks as its vice president.
Circuit Court records indicate that Timothy Hicks was already having a challenging year before the water main incident.
On June 16, Hicks filed a lawsuit against a former employer, Dustin Ertle, also of Wellington, and two companies Ertle controls, Florida Communication Contractors LLC and D.B.E. Management.
Hicks’ suit accuses Ertle of failing to pay Hicks as promised after the two agreed to work together in 2017.
Ertle had pursued Hicks since 2012 because he knew of Hicks’ skills in the communications construction business, developed while Hicks worked for the national firm Cypress Communications from November 1998 to October 2017, the suit states.
Hicks’ skills include drilling and boring, fiber splicing, trenching for conduit, pulling fiber and aerial infrastructure, the suit states.
Hicks’ suit states he left Cypress Communications to enter into a partnership with Ertle and ultimately worked with him between April 2017 and spring 2019, when the two severed ties over Hicks’ claims that Ertle was cheating him.