Lordstown sewer project likely to be late, over budget

By Ed Runyan

When the project is complete, 95 percent of the village will have sewers.

LORDSTOWN — A sewer project for the east side of the village is likely to be a year or more late and several million dollars over budget when it is finished.

It also has produced a lawsuit filed by the village against the engineer who supervised the nearly completed project.

Mayor Michael Chaffee said construction began in the spring of 2008 and was supposed to be complete by spring 2009. Councilman Arno Hill said the project had an original deadline of December 2008.

The sewer eventually will serve about 600 homes and provide sewers to about a third of the village, Chaffee said. When complete, 95 percent of the village will have sewers, he added.

Various problems have cropped up this year — the biggest one being that engineers had intended for one part of the sewer to travel alongside Highland Avenue. But they later discovered that the location of a gas line would make that impossible, Hill said.

To fix the problem, engineers designed the project to run under Highland Avenue. That dramatically increased the cost, Hill said.

When the construction was complete, officials discovered that the pump station that is supposed to force the sewage uphill was not pumping sufficiently, Chaffee said.

Officials have worked on that problem for a couple of months. Once that problem is ironed out, the system should be ready to use, Chaffee said. He hopes that will happen by the end of this year.

Chaffee and Hill say the cost of the project has increased from around $8.5 million to about $11 million. Some of the additional costs are being paid through village funds and part through more than $2 million in loans.

Because of problems associated with the project, the village sued James A. Farina, the engineer who supervised construction of the project, and his company, JFE Consultants of North Lima. The suit was filed Oct. 30 in Trumbull County County Common Pleas Court and asks for more than $25,000 from Farina.

Farina did not return a phone call Friday seeking comment.

The suit says Farina violated the contract between him and the village in the following ways: He failed to secure a $2 million insurance bond and provide documentation of the bond; he failed to produce written change orders and several other types of construction documents to the village; he failed to conduct certain construction tests; and he failed to report to village officials.

The contract called for Farina to earn $360,000, but the village is withholding $54,000 until problems with the sewer are fixed, Hill said.

Farina has not attended a village council meeting to provide updates to the full council since the spring, Hill said. Farina discusses the project only with a select few village officials, including Chaffee, Hill said.

“We have no idea where the project is at,” Hill said.

Stanley J. Zoldan, who won election to village council this month, has been raising questions about the project since the spring, asking why no village official checked to make sure Farina had the $2 million insurance bond the contract required.

Hill said it turns out Farina had a $1 million bond until questions were raised.

Zoldan says he believes he won election to village council largely on the basis of his questions about the sewer project.

In a letter to voters in late October, Zoldan said the village is already having to pay back $600,000 per year on the $8 million low-interest loan provided by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

“With no income from the sewer coming in ... we [the taxpayers] are in big trouble,” he said in a letter to voters in late October.

runyan@vindy.com