New $28M public safety building has toilet trouble

Contractor ripping up concrete floors to fix sewage clogging issue

Backed up toilets in Saratoga County ’s new $28 million public safety building are forcing a contractor to return and rip up its concrete floors.

Tom Speziale, acting commissioner of public works, said two areas of the Paul E. Lent Public Safety Building — the corridor behind the 911 center and the public health bathrooms — are being pulled up because a dip in the sewage lines is causing waste to become clogged.

“It’s below the concrete slab, so in order to fix it we have to cut the floor out,” Speziale said on Friday.

Right now, he said, there is a 20-by-2-foot trench running down the hallway near the communications center of the building that was dedicated on Aug. 20.

Speziale said his department pinpointed the areas where the sewage stoppage is occurring by snaking a video camera through the pipes. Once the area was identified, workers started busting the concrete floors, a job that was done during evening hours in order to not disrupt the work of the 911 center. He said digging and repairs are being done during the day as they are not too noisy.

Once the work is done near the 911 center, two public health bathrooms will be closed for repairs. That work, he said, will be limited to inside the bathrooms and workers in that department will have to use bathrooms in other areas of the buildings.

Otherwise, he said, “it’s having no adverse effects to any of the building operations.”

In addition to the 911 center

and county public health, the new 64,000-square-foot building houses the county ’s Sheriff ’s office, emergency services and probation department. Built on county land, the facility has room for 235 employees.

Saratoga Springs Supervisor Matthew Veitch, who chairs the county ’s Building and Grounds Committee, said that his committee is monitoring the situation at the public safety facility.

“If there are any more issues, we will handle it from the committee level,” Veitch said. “Whatever the problems are now, it’s a contractor and engineering issue.”

Speziale said the sewage problems are frustrating, but not unusual for a big construction project.

“These unforeseen situations happen,” Speziale said. “You deal with them as they come. It’s unexpected. But I have been involved in a lot of construction projects where unexpected things come up after construction is completed.”