City, officials celebrate progress of water plant
Ceremonial groundbreaking calls attention to savings on massive, $57 million project
WOONSOCKET — The $57 million water treatment plant that is taking shape off Jillson Avenue is the priciest utility infrastructure project in decades, but officials yesterday called attention to one way they’re keeping costs in check.
Against a backdrop of construction cranes, concrete forms and scaffolding, Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank CEO Jeffrey Diehl joined a who’s who of local officials at the work site to announce that the city will save nearly $2 million in financing costs over the life of the project by borrowing through the state agency.
“We lend money at rates that are about 25 percent below the market,” said Diehl. “We’ll be able to save them, over the life of this project, probably over a million and a half in interest costs.”
Although the project is already about a third of the way complete, Diehl’s financial forecast came during a ceremonial groundbreaking
“The significance of today is to show we’re not at the beginning stage and we’re not at the end, and it shows the great progress that’s happening, how massive a project this is and what a huge undertaking.” —Woonsocket Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt
for the construction of the state-mandated successor to the antiquated Hamman Water Treatment Plant off Manville Road. Members of Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s administration and the City Council were among those hoisting symbolic shovels with Diehl, but the event did draw at least one surprise participant – former Mayor Leo T. Fontaine.
Fontaine, who served from
2009-2013 before Baldelli-Hunt defeated him at the polls, took the first steps to comply with orders from the state Department of Environmental Management to replace the existing plant. During his administration, the city seated a panel to evaluate the feasibility of various construction sites, eventually settling on an 18-acre parcel off Jillson Avenue.
“We started with just a blank slate of not knowing what we were going to do,” recalled Fontaine. “To be able to bring so many good people together, to do so much work to be able to start the project and to have the current mayor and (Public Works Director Steven) D’Agostino with the council see it through – they’ve done great work. To be able to see a project like this come to fruition is really gratifying.”
The orders from DEM to replace the existing plant predate his administration, originating around 2007, according to Fontaine. DEM wanted the plant to stop discharging “filter backwash” into the Blackstone River because it was eroding the quality of the riverine ecosystem for fish and other creatures that rely on clean water to survive.
The city could have complied by extending a pipeline to collect the water-polluting backwash – a sludgy, coffee-colored material that contains all the byproducts of the water purification process – and transfer it to the Woonsocket Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant. But officials realized early on that the pipeline-only option would have been a case of throwing good money after bad because the Hamman plant, built in 1963, was approaching the end of its useful lifespan, and it relied on obsolete purification technology – granular charcoal filters – similar to an ordinary swimming pool, to make water drinkable.
D’Agostino said the new plant will employ a state-of-the-art method to purify drinking water known as dissolved air flotation, of DAF. Basically, D’Agostino explained, the technology involves pumping air through the water to force tiny particulates to the surface, where they are skimmed off and collected. A pipeline from the new plant will convey the skim to the wastewater treatment plant off Cumberland Hill Road.
“This is the technology of now,” said D’Agostino, who added that he was surprisingly pleased with how smoothly the project has been going so far. “Knock on wood.”
During the preliminary blasting phase of the site preparation, there were few complaints, and construction is presently about a third of the way finished, according to D’Agostino.
After an exhaustive procurement process, the city awarded a contract about two years ago to AECOM-Suez, a global engineering and construction partnership, calling for them to design, build and operate the plant for 20 years. In order to comply with a court-enforceable consent degree the city has signed with DEM, the plant must be finished and operational by December 2020, said D’Agostino.
“That’s contractual,” said D’Agostino. “It has to be done by then, no ifs, ands or buts about it.”
Under contract for the state Department of Health, another global engineering company, Wright-Pierce, is also intimately involved in day-to-day oversight of the project, according to the public works director.
In addition to Fontaine, just about everyone who’d been involved with the project since its inception showed up for the groundbreaking, including members of the original land-search committee. At least one of them has since become an elected official – City Councilman James C. Cournoyer. Others included Paul Levreault, Alan Rivers and City Council President Dan Gendron, who was already on the council when the panel formed the search committee.
“The significance of today is to show, we’re not at the beginning stage and we’re not at the end, and it shows the great progress that’s happening, how massive a project this is and what a huge undertaking,” Baldelli-Hunt said. “People take it for granted – we turn on the faucet and water comes out. A finely-tuned water plant equates to the importance of water in our lives.”
Gendron said the progress was the culmination of many years or work and careful consideration, ultimately leading the city to choose the Jillson Avenue site over one closer to the reservoir, on land in neighboring North Smithfield.
“What this will prove in the end was this was the right choice, as well as the best choice,” Gendron said. “There was a lot of thought that went into it. It’s a great pleasure to see this finally coming to fruition. I’m excited to see this and to get to where we have an even higher quality of water in the future.”
Since last year, the city has borrowed about $27 million from the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank in two separate bond issues carrying interest rates of about 2 percent to finance the project. Diehl said the third and final installment of bonds covering the balance of the work will be floated in several weeks. Interest rates fluctuate on a daily basis, so RIIB won’t know until the bond sale what the precise cost will be.
Recently, Baldelli-Hunt said, the city acquired an additional five acres of land adjacent the original construction site for the project, so it now controls a unified parcel of 23 acres just southeast of Bernon Heights Elementary School.
“When this is finished and we have a new water treatment plant, as a team, we’ll evaluate what the site looks like and what potential may still be here to further this site along for green energy growth,” the mayor said. “There’s a lot happening here in Woonsocket...”