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Construction is well under way on a new wastewater treatment plant to serve the small coastal communities of Netarts and Oceanside, but a complaint that recently hit Multnomah County Circuit Court has jeopardized the plans for the pipes that will carry sewage to the facility and then move the treated water to the ocean.

The Netarts Oceanside Sanitary District for years has planned to replace its 35-year-old treatment plant. But the drilling company that was hired to build two subsurface pipelines filed a complaint in December against the project’s general contractor, Salem-based , for an alleged breach of contract. Now the route of the pipelines is up in the air, and project costs may rise.

of Cameron Park, Calif., claims that complications from the subsurface conditions led Emery & Sons to unfairly delete HDD’s work from the project, costing the horizontal drilling company an estimated $2.35 million in damages.

Instead of drilling through the hillside, the district is now considering a new plan to lay the pipes along a local road. This plan would mean doubling the length of the pipelines and building a new effluent pump station – adding about $4.2 million to the project, according to Dan Mello, district superintendent. The bid on the project was slightly more than $13 million, he said.

“There’s a difference of opinion on why (the initial plan) didn’t work,” Mello said, unable to comment further on the pending litigation. “Problems were encountered with the drilling, and we had to make a choice to finish this treatment plant on time.”

If the new treatment plant is not able to begin initial operations by Sept. 30, the state Department of Environmental Quality could penalize the district $250 per day for every violation of the schedule that the DEQ and the district agreed to in 2006.

“They tried to drill straight up the hill and hit rock twice in the late winter last year,” said Mike Pinney, a DEQ senior environmental engineer for the northwest region. “Now they have a much longer route, which adds a little expense, but it’s obviously easier to dig and it was impractical to try to keep drilling.”

The alternative route would involve laying two pipelines, each approximately 6,000 feet, beneath local roads.

Rick Evans, vice president of engineering and estimating at HDD, said that the project site is “complicated,” but he and the company’s lawyers declined to comment further.

The official complaint argues that the specifications provided with HDD’s contract documents did not accurately represent the gravel, excessive sand flows and groundwater that the drillers actually encountered, which it says led to problems and project delays.

HDD submitted claims for the additional costs, which Emery denied. Then in June, Emery and the district issued a change order that deleted the $2 million horizontal drilling component from the project.

“We deleted the remaining and uncompleted work on the directional bores; that doesn’t say there won’t be more,” said Vince Makinson, vice president of Emery & Sons. “At this point nothing is contracted for that yet. We haven’t been issued any direction.”

The project was initially expected to receive a significant funding package from U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. The USDA awarded the Netarts Oceanside Sanitary District a grant for approximately $9 million and a loan for approximately $12 million, but then reduced those awards to $7.4 million and $10 million, respectively, because the project came in several million dollars under its original estimates.

“The economy turned south and contractors were hungry for work, so across the board, bids were coming in well below estimates,” said Sam Goldstein, community programs director for USDA Rural Development. “That was happening everywhere in Oregon and around the country in some places. It’s certainly not typical, but these were odd economic times.”

But now, because of the horizontal drilling problems, the project may receive additional federal money after all. Additional funding amounts are being reviewed by USDA Rural Development, Goldstein said.

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Contact Lance Greaves; Lance.Greaves@emeryandsons.com or Dan Vannoy; Dan.Vannoy@emeryandsons.com for details.

The post Emery & Sons Construction is Requesting Subcontractor Bids for the City of Portland Powell Butte Reservoir No. 2 Phase 2. Project. Non-Mandatory Pre Bid Meeting January 4, 2012 at 9:00 AM appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Emery & Sons Construction is requesting sub contractors for all phases of work. Bid date is Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 2:00 PM.

The post Emery & Sons Construction is Requesting Sub Contractors for the Port of Vancouver USA Gateway Avenue Grade Separation Project #19. Bid Date is Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 2:00 PM. appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Emery & Sons Construction is hoping that sub contractors will submit bids for the City of St. Helens – 2011 Sanitary Sewer Lateral CCTV Project. They need all scopes of work submitted, and all bids are due no later than 2:00pm on Feb. 24

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Finding a way to repair decaying sewer infrastructure beneath streetcar tracks without disrupting service has become more than just a traditional boring project – pun intended – for workers at Emery & Sons Construction; it’s a way to test a new tunneling technology.

The company last week began work on a $2.3 million Portland Bureau of Environmental Services project to repair several aging segments of sewer line in Northwest and Southwest Portland. Workers plan to repair infrastructure in seven areas around the city in an effort that should continue through early August.

Most of the work will be performed the traditional way – digging out damaged pipe and replacing it. However, for the sections around Southwest Park Avenue and Southwest Market Street, the process grew a little more complicated because of the Portland Streetcar, said Bill Theiss, the BES construction manager on the project.

“At that area and Mill Street, we need to go under the streetcar without disturbing it,” Theiss said. “There’s also a storm sewer and other things under the ground there that we don’t want to hit. We have to be very precise – and the technology we’re working with is very controllable.”

The company and city decided to use the Vermeer AXIS boring machine at the site. A guiding laser is used to dig smaller pipe tunnels than possible with normal micro-tunneling techniques, and it also allows workers to pull a single, long piece of flexible piping backward through the hole, rather than push pipe through in several segments.

And because of specifications for the area, it was the only way to fix that part of the sewer infrastructure without digging up the tracks, said Dale Bettencourt, project manager with Emery & Sons.

“It’s pretty slick,” Bettencourt said. “The machine comes up in one lane, and then it pulls the pipe back through. On paper it’s supposed to be cheaper than the other options, although I guess we’ll see.”

Representatives from Vermeer Corp. and the Australian inventor of the product are in Portland to operate the machine for Emery & Sons as a demonstration, Bettencourt said.

“They’re hoping to do the whole process in one day,” he said.

Workers from Emery & Sons are nearly done digging two pits on either side of the tracks to serve as the starting and stopping point for the machine. The boring will take place today or Wednesday. Installation of the high-density polyethylene pipe will follow, Bettencourt said.

This is the second time the city has experimented with the technology. The first was for a sewer project on Yamhill Street, Theiss said.

“Micro-tunneling generally only goes down to 36-inch pipe, and this goes down to 10-inch to 14-inch pipe,” Theiss said. “At Yamhill it was only a quarter to a half inch off when it came out – that’s very straight. It’s very accurate and that’s important because we can’t have any low spots.”

The city investigated several parts of the sewer system before selecting the segments for the Northwest and Southwest Portland sewer rehabilitation projects, Theiss said.

“Every year we go out and do a whole series of these underground TV reports, where we run a camera down pipes and look at the condition they’re in,” Theiss said. “The pipes in this project were chosen two to three years ago, and they were starting to collapse, or we found holes or something else was going wrong.”

Most of the sewer pipes across the city were installed nearly 100 years ago, and others were installed in the 1950s, so the city checks segments fairly frequently, and runs cameras through the pipes systematically at least every five to 10 years, he said.

“Usually 40 to 60 years after installation we still have good service on those pipes, but after 60 years we start to have problems,” Theiss said. “After 100 years we start looking real close.”

The bundling of projects into a larger contract is something the city started about a year and a half ago, he added.

“The whole thought was we’d try to build enough of a project so we could group them together to get a better price – if you do smaller projects individually, the price goes up,” Theiss said.

A lot of the oldest pipes are made of reinforced concrete or fired clay – which in some places is patched together using unusual methods, he said.

“In general, the clay they used would be in one solid segment, but in some spots they stuck pieces together with grout, and every now and then we discover more of those,” Theiss said. “Sometimes that’s still serviceable, but sometimes it’s not.”

Fired clay is an old sort of material, but it’s regaining appeal, Theiss added.

“We’re starting to go back to it because of its longevity – it holds up well against the corrosive gases,” Theiss said. “And let’s face it, the clay we’d consider a green project. We also find it’s a way to get away from the oil industry and PVC pipe, and at some point we’re going to need to do that.”

The bundle of repairs in the Emery & Sons project won’t use clay-fired pipes, but it’s something the city has tested and might use in future projects, said Stephen Sykes, a spokesman for the BES.

“For this we’re using both PVC and HDPE pipe, and we’ll also use reinforced concrete pipe in one of the larger sections,” Sykes said.

The replacement pipes also will be larger than the original ones to allow for future city development, he said.

“Since these pipes are 70 to 90 years old, and since there’s been a significant amount of development, it makes sense to upsize,” Sykes said.

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Emery and Sons Construction is looking for Sub Contractors for the two projects going on in the City of Coburg. They are requesting bids all all phases of work – if you have any questions, call Emery and Sons at 503-588-7576. All bids are due to Emery and Sons by 2pm on Jan. 26

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A crew from Emery & Sons Construction relocates a Tualatin Valley Water District water line on Southwest 77th Avenue. The work is part of the garden home segment of the Fanno Pump Station and pressure sewer improvements for the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services. The pressure sewer will manage storm and sewer flows in the Fanno Creek basin.

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