City waiting for RIDOH authorization of water treatment plant
Facility is almost operationally complete, but it must pass a 30-day trial before being put into use
WOONSOCKET — Citing COVID-related delays and continued regulatory hurdles, the city doesn’t anticipate accepting the new, $56.7 million water treatment plant from contractors until early summer – months later than originally forecast.
Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino
says the largest utilities project in more than a half-century is all but operationally complete, but the city will not take delivery of the facility from Woonsocket Water Services LLC (WWS) until the Rhode Island Department of Health authorizes it do to so.
Located off Jillson Avenue, the plant has already surpassed RIDOH’s seven-day testing protocols, but it now must undergo a more exhaustive, 30-day trial before the regulatory agency will sign off on the plant, according to D’Agostino. He said the city’s engineers are presently trading “a series of Q-and-As” with RIDOH to settle on a date for commencing the next phase of testing.
“We could hit the switch right now and that plant could run,” said D’Agostino. “The only thing that’s preventing
us from doing that is the Department of Health.”
City Engineer John Pratt’s latest progress report pegged April 28 as the contract acceptance date for the new plant, but in an interview Tuesday D’Agostino said July 1 is now a more realistic time.
Though discussions and planning for the new plant date back even longer, the city was ordered to build a new water treatment plant in 2008 in a Superior Court consent decree signed by the city and the state Department of Environmental Management. The agreement, modified many times, called on the city to have the plant up and running no later than Dec. 31, 2020.
The pandemic threw that deadline for a loop.
“Multiple positive COVID test results for the site staff caused the site to be shut down,” Pratt’s April 5 report to the City Council says. “The shutdown caused critical electrical work, such as final wiring and instrumentation, to be delayed as key electrical staff tested positive for COVID.”
The hiccups caused several equipment manufacturers to reschedule plant startup, testing and training, prompting WWS to project it would overshoot the acceptance date for the plant by 118 days, thus pushing the deadline out to April 28.
Aside from the regulatory impasse, D’Agostino says there are only a handful of minor “punchlist” items that the city wants the contractor to check off before it accepts the plant, including landscaping, an elevator, site grading and “a few electrical issues.”
All of the $56.7 million the city borrowed to pay for construction has been spent, D’Agostino said, though the city still owes some $2 million in retainers to the contractors. The public works chief said the city is exploring the feasibility of covering at least a portion of that from the roughly $40 million in funds it is slated to receive from the American Rescue Plan Act – President Biden’s $2 trillion COVID relief package – over the next two years.
Though they’re a few yards from the finish line, city officials already sound as if they’ve run a marathon in bringing the plant, so many years in the making, to its present stage of completion.
“It’s a huge milestone,” said Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt. “This is a project we all would have benefited from if it was completed years ago and the cost to complete it would have been much less. But the reality is we are in a very good position in the city of Woonsocket with the building and completion of the plant. It will serve our city for many years.”
Baldelli-Hunt had been criticized by members of a plant-siting committee when she was first elected mayor in 2013 for putting a pause on the project, but she defends that decision, saying she had a responsibility to take a second look at the decisions of the prior administration before committing to such costly work.
“This was one of the first things that was thrown at this administration,” the mayor said. “We did our due diligence...you need to be certain you’re comfortable with the decisions that have been made when you’re taking on a project of this magnitude.”
D’Agostino says the plant is the largest public utilities project the city has undertaken since the existing facility – the Charles Hamman Water Treatment Plant on Manville Road – was completed over 60 years ago.
While the original consent decree with DEM was signed comparative recently, discussions on replacing the Hamman facility date back roughly two decades, says D’Agostino.
“I’ve done the research,” he said. “That can’s been kicked down the road for about 20 years.”
The state mandate to replace the existing plant was driven primarily by concerns over the health of the marine habitat of the Blackstone River. The antiquated facility relies on purification technology that requires a byproduct of water filtration known as “backwash” to be discharged into the river.
Sludgy and tea-colored, filtration backwash looks a lot like mud and reduces the amount of oxygen available for fish and other river life.
Amid increasing pressure from regulators, the city finally issued a request for proposals to build the plant in 2015 and accepted one in 2017. Now known as Woonsocket Water Services LLC, the winning bidder is a consortium of global engineering and public utilities companies, including AECOM, C.H. Nickerson and Suez. A few other familiar giants were among the bidders, including CH2M Hill, which runs the Woonsocket Regional Watewater Treatment Plant.
Bids ran as high as $72 million, and even WWS’s original offer was substantially higher – over $61 million. Through some preliminary negotiations with the company and internal cost-saving measures, D’Agostino was able to shave about $4.7 million off the figure.
The plant will have the capacity to churn out 7.5 million gallons of potable water per day – far more than the city’s average consumption, but it’s designed to be easily converted for up to 10 million.
The contract price includes not just the cost of designing and building the plant, but operating it for 20 years. The so-called “DBO” option was the overwhelming recommendation of consultants who reviewed the bids as the most cost-effective before the city awarded the contract.
When the plant is pressed into service, D’Agostino expects the city will have some sort of celebratory event to commemorate the occasion.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “We’re a couple of Q-and-A’s away from throwing the switch and Woonsocket residents will be able to enjoy some good, safe, clean drinking water from a plant that will probably last 50 years or more.”