Current Projects

Massive Sewer Project Begins

Herald News - James Finlaw Reporter - 5/21/02

More than a year after it was scheduled to start, work on the first phase of the city's $115 million combined sewer overflow project has finally begun. The long delay came to an end about two weeks ago when crews from P. Gioioso and Sons began razing a number of vacant homes in the city's South End. The demolition project involves the leveling of nine houses on Swift, Arnold and Flynn Streets , all of which are located off Bay Street in the vicinity of the city's wastewater treatment plant. The properties were all owned by the city. The land being cleared of homes is the spot where the city will one day begin boring a massive, three-mile sewer tunnel, beneath several city blocks.

The $55.9 million tunnel will be 20 feet in diameter, and will run at an average depth of 100 feet below the surface from the Swift Street site to Lowell Street. The huge tunnel will intercept the existing sewage tunnels located in the central and southern portions of the city, and funnel their contents to the treatment plant. The existing tunnels are antiquated, rather small and easily overburdened by even small amounts of rainfall. The result is that they routinely overflow and spill raw sewerage directly into Mount Hope Bay. The city is under a federal court order to complete the project to prevent the overflow.

The boring of the three-mile tunnel will be performed by J.F.Shea Co.,Inc., of Walnut, Calif. The firm won the right to construct the tunnel in February after submitting a low bid of $55,990,000 to the city's purchasing department. P.Gioioso and Sons of Hyde Park is doing the whole first phase of the project, at a cost of $820,000. Besides demolishing the structures on Swift, Arnold and Flynn streets, the construction company will soon begin construction of a 460-foot long, 7-foot-wide pipe that will eventually connect the treatment plant to the three-mile CSO tunnel.

Department of Public Works Director Terry Sullivan said he expects the firm to install the pipe within the next month. Sullivan said J.F.Shea would begin working on the massive CSO tunnel shortly after the smaller pipe was laid. "The actual tunnel work contract will start this summer. The tunnel boring itself probably won't occur until the fall,"he said. The city originally planned to begin work on the tunnel project in April 2001. But those plans were dashed in January 2001 when the city received the low bid of $99 million for the tunnel project - $23 million higher than had been anticipated.

The project was immediately put on hold as the city and project engineer Camp, Dresser and McKee of Cambridge scrambled to find ways to reduce the cost of the project. The two ultimately hit on the idea of breaking the project down into smaller components, and reducing the scope of the work. The decision to break the project into separate contracts has paid off, as P.Gioioso and Sons and J.F.Shea are receiving a total of $60,819,500 for their work, a figure well below the $99 million price tag the project carried in 2001. The city is also continuing to work with the entities charged with overseeing the project, to see if portions of the work can be dropped or delayed to cut costs. Overseeing agencies include the state Department of Environmental Management, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Boston-based environmental group the Conservation Law Foundation. The city is under a federal court order to complete the first phase of the tunnel project by Dec.31, 2004. The order was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel in 1992 in response to a lawsuit filed against the city by the Conservation Law Foundation.

With the onset of the embattled project finally here, Mayor Edward M. Lambert, Jr. said the city will work to ensure the public is kept abreast of its status. "It's kind of hard to believe after all these years that we are on the verge of constructing this tunnel,"said Lambert."This is it. It does have to happen and we have to do it with a view towards being as informative as possible to the public,"he said.

Beyond the three-mile tunnel, the court order also calls for the construction of a tunnel in the North End of the city by Dec. 31, 2009, to handle the effluent in the sewer tunnels located in that portion of the city. The city is working with the state and the Conservation Law Foundation to come up with an alternative to the North End tunnel. Sullivan said the cost of the overall project, if the North End tunnel remains in place, would be appoximately $115 million. Lambert said the city will use grants, low interest loans and state revolving fund loans to pay for the expensive project. However he said the city stands to save the most money if the Conservation Law Foundation, and the federal and state governments allow the city to reduce the scale of the project. "We have no choice but to go forward, whether we find additional monies or not,"said Lambert. "Our greatest relief is going to come from downsizing the project,"he said.

<Back