Equipment used in the first phase of Thornbury's wastewater treatment process is in dire need of replacement, and it will cost about $1 million more than originally expected.
Staff came before The Blue Mountains Committee of the Whole on Feb. 11 with a request for another $959,000 for the project, which is now expected to cost $4.04 million.
“The Thornbury treatment plant has been struggling. This year has not been a successful year. We have had many issues,” said Allison Kershaw, manager of water and wastewater services. “We are seeing [elevated] E.coli levels and the reason we are seeing this, the headworks has totally failed and we are having to bypass them the majority of the time. We are also quickly reaching the capacity of the plant."
Town staff report the current equipment in the headworks portion of the plant is at the end of its life and is no longer operational.
Headworks or inlet works are the initial stage of the water purification process at a wastewater facility.
Headworks equipment generally involves a system of screens, filters and classifiers that remove grit and debris from the wastewater before it can be further processed and eventually released downstream. Headworks remove inorganic materials such as sticks and stones, as well as things that get flushed even though they shouldn't, these can include wipes, rags, cigarette butts, food particles, bones, and plastics.
Operating a wastewater treatment plant without a properly functioning headworks system can put the facility at risk of not achieving regulatory effluent criteria, which creates a great risk to both the health and safety of plant operators and the environment, according to staff.
Kershaw says this project and construction is critical in order to remain in compliance with provincial regulations.
Discussions and planning for this project began at town hall as far back as 2014. In the summer of 2018, town council retained J.L. Richards & Associates Ltd. to prepare a primary design, final design and undertake the contract administration.
A year later, in July of 2019, staff returned to council chambers asking for an increase of $100,000 to the Engineering Services Agreement in order to cover the expense of engineering an additional building to house the headworks equipment. This brought the total engineering costs to $311,755.75.
With 60 per cent of the engineering work complete, J.L. Richards' cost estimate for construction of the project was $2,519,214. The town planned this expense into the 2019 budget.
Reduced capacity in the facility’s lagoons, results from a geotechnical report, and incorrect assumptions made early in the project contributed to the increased budget and the staff request that came before committee on Feb. 11.
With the design engineering phase now complete, staff has returned to council chambers to ask that an additional nearly $1 million be added to the construction budget.
“Specifically, this is a request for an increase in the budget to begin construction. This is a significant ask. It is just under a million, which is just under 33 per cent of our total construction budget,” said Shawn Carey, director of operations for the Town of The Blue Mountains.
The additional funds are to cover $128,000 for general contractor overheads, $366,000 for electrical and instrumentation, $295,000 for site works, $105,000 to create a temporary by-pass, $25,000 for additional key contract services that include sewage haulage during headworks bypass, and $40,000 for the establishment of a senior infrastructure capital project co-ordinator.
“This is why we hired a consultant who builds these kinds of buildings, so that they could provide us with an efficient path forward,” said councillor Peter Bordignon. “Now we sit here with an additional ask and we need an explanation. I have to be accountable to the taxpayer and these are conversations and questions that I know I am going to have to answer to. So, how is it that you can be so vastly off in the estimates that were provided?”
Michael Troop, project manager with J.L. Richards & Associates Ltd. said the only item that the engineering consultants could have possibly foreseen at the 60 per cent design stage was the electrical and instrumentation, which is also the largest ticket item in the budget addition.
“Of all of the items outlined in the additional expenses, the electrical is likely the only one that could have been foreseen by our engineering group,” Troop said. “I am equally dismayed that these items were missing. These are often rated facilities and rated equipment is more expensive, and that was not accounted for in the original budget.”
The engineering firm had also originally planned to use the town’s lagoon system during the construction phase, which is no longer an option.
“Initially when we started this project we thought we would have capacity in the lagoons to bypass the entire plant and sort the material in the lagoons, but we have done some work and we do not have the capacity that we once thought we had,” Kershaw explained. “So, we know we are going to have to build a temporary bypass and that is causing some of this additional expense.”
Troop also outlined the fact that at the 60 per cent mark the engineers did not have the geotechnical reports. Once this information was obtained there were a number of changes to the original plans that were required, including the use of a different material for the building’s foundation.
“We looked at the existing building and with the absence of the geotechnical information we assumed we could use the same type of foundation and that is what we priced,” Troop said. “When we received the geotechnical report, it stipulated the requirement to use micropiles instead of spread-footing foundation. That was unknown to us after we had already submitted our costs.”
Despite the frustration and major disappointment expressed by every councillor and several members of town staff, the increase of $959,000 to the budget was carried.
The total budget for the project now sits at $4,045,200. The additional funds will be drawn from both the Thornbury Sewer Capital Development Charge Reserve Fund ($738,700) and the Wastewater Asset Replacement Reserve Fund ($259,000).
Before agreeing to the budget increase council directed staff that it would like to see a value engineering exercise completed by all parties involved in this project.
“I don’t understand why it is such a surprise that these items are coming in at this cost,” said councilor Rob Sampson. “I think we need to take a good hard look at this file and this particular project, find out what went wrong, why it went wrong and how we don’t do it again. This is an embarrassment to try and explain to the taxpayer. We shouldn’t be this far off with these projects. Clearly, we need to learn from what mistakes were made collectively on this file and never do it again.”
Shawn Everitt, chief administrative officer for The Blue Mountains echoed councils ask for the process to be reviewed, adding, “I want the public and council to understand that we are frustrated with this as well and quite frankly, bringing this report forward isn't a situation that any of us like, however it is the reality. There are no excuses. A million dollars is a million dollars, and that is significant. But, from a staff position, we take this extremely seriously.”
The final tender for the construction phase of the project has already been released and closed. Town staff hope to have shovels in the ground by May 2020.
