Lordstown working on sewer problems

By Ed Runyan

A lawsuit contesting the village’s right to run the sewer district is pending in federal court in Youngstown.

LORDSTOWN — Though the village has a huge new sewer system that does not yet work and pending lawsuits relating to it, Councilman Arno Hill says he’s hopeful that the problems can be ironed out over the next few months.

At a utilities committee meeting Tuesday, the village received a commitment from the Youngstown company CT Consultants that it will try to help the village out of its predicament.

The village has worked with CT Consultants for years but hired a former CT employee to oversee the construction of the project about two years ago. Problems with the sewer system cropped up, delaying construction and increasing the cost. In October, the village sued James A. Farina of North Lima for his work on the project. He could not be reached to comment.

Also, a lawsuit filed by the Trumbull County commissioners contesting the village’s right to run the sewer district that the sewers will create is pending in U.S. District Court in Youngstown before Judge Peter C. Economus.

Meeting last week, village council agreed to pay $550,000 to one of the contractors that worked on the project, Marucci and Gaffney Excavating Co. of Youngstown, after the village and the company went to mediation.

The extra $550,000 represented increased costs and materials required by Marucci and Gaffney because of changes that had to be made to the project after it started.

With CT Consultants’ help, the village now hopes to work through the change orders and requests for payment that have been submitted by other contractors, including A.P. O’Horo of Liberty and Fabrizi Trucking & Paving Co. of Cleveland, said Hill, who is village council’s new utilities committee chairman.

One of the biggest problems that occurred with the project was when it was discovered that part of the sewer line could not travel along Highland Avenue as planned because it would be too close to a gas line.

To fix the problem, it was built under Highland Avenue, which dramatically increased the cost. Backfill materials used under a road are much more expensive than the kind used beside a road, Hill said.

Some of the change orders for A.P. O’Horo and Fabrizi Trucking are also related to moving the sewers under Highland Avenue, Hill said.

Hill and Mayor Michael Chaffee say changes to the project have increased its cost 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.

Hill said the sewer has been in the ground for about a year, but no village resident has yet been able to connect to it. So far, the force main serving Highland Avenue doesn’t provide sufficient pressure to push the sewage through the pipes, Hill said.

Officials hope that relatively inexpensive corrections can be made to the system to get it working. New Councilman John McCarthy raised the possibility at Friday’s council meeting, however, that the village could be in for a much more serious problem when he suggested that some of the sewer lines might need to be torn up and replaced.

“In a worst-case scenario, we could have to dig up the sewer and rebuild it,” he said.

The sewers eventually will serve about 600 homes and businesses, including about 300 homes in the Imperial mobile home park off Bailey Road near the General Motors plant.

The sewers also will serve residents on East Hallock-Young Road, East Salt Springs Road and the Brook Hollow development, among others on most of the east side of the village.

Hill said the village does not yet have a contract with CT Consultants, but it will be working out one “eventually.”

runyan@vindy.com