Water Street is open, but the ill-fated sewer project is not finished.
The last 70 feet of pipe to be repaired has settled more than expected and the soil in the area is unstable enough to put the project on hold so the town and the contractor can come up with a different way of finishing the job.
“Obviously that area is problematic,” said William Coyle, director of the Plymouth Department of Public Works. “Whether it’s the soil conditions or the construction methods is debatable. But rather than focus on the cause we decided to focus on a solution to get this done.”
The fix under consideration dashed any hopes of finishing the project by Memorial Day, Coyle said. So last week Northern Construction, the private contractor doing the job, paved the road and left the site. They will return for an encore in the fall.
“We were up against it and were not sure it would be finished even by July 4,” Coyle said. “It’s not ideal either way, but we decided it was important to get the road open now for the tourist season and come back after Labor Day.”
While the businesses along the waterfront welcomed the opening of the street, they were in for a disappointing surprise.
“My clients witnessed the paving and they were delighted. They thought that it was all done,” said William Burke, attorney for the owners of Mamma Mia’s and Ziggy’s Ice Cream, who are suing the town and the contractor for damage to their properties and lost business. “No one came to them to say we have this issue. It is total news to them now, and that is unacceptable.”
The problem runs from the rotary near the visitor’s center to the intersection of Memorial Drive. It has been a troubled stretch of infrastructure for years. In 2014, an earlier attempt at replacing the sewer line was stopped relatively quickly, when higher than expected groundwater and tidal influence on the area swamped the trench, flooded the street, and disrupted the manhole and pipes installed. Details of the 2014 failure are included in the town’s 2022 public presentation about the history of the sewer project.
After the 2014 incident, numerous test borings were done to characterize the subsurface layers and monitor the flow of water in the area. That data was used to create the current design for the sewer project and was included in the 603 page description of the site and project the town issued in 2022 as its “invitation to bid” for a contractor.
Whether or not the groundwater data, and the eventual design of the project, was reliable is one of the central issues in dispute. The town has claimed the design was proper and construction methods caused problems. Northern Construction has claimed the design was based on inaccurate data. And the property owners suing argue the town and the contractor share responsibility.
“The failure to anticipate what clearly happened before would happen again, is another black eye for Northern and the town,” Burke said.
The sad saga of the sewer line flows from the need to replace an aging quarter-mile section of 30-inch sewer pipe installed in 1969 that runs under the edge of the harbor adjacent to Water Street. Town officials were concerned that a break in the old line would be an environmental disaster for the waterfront.
Northern Construction was awarded the contract to replace the old sewer line in 2022. Work began in December that year and was supposed to be finished by the end of June 2023. But in March 2023, during the first phase of excavation, groundwater problems, shifting soils, and damage to the street, sidewalks, and five buildings on Water and Chilton streets forced a shutdown of the project.
One building was damaged so badly that it had to be razed. The owners of the affected buildings are suing both the town and Northern Construction, seeking more than $5 million in damages. That litigation is ongoing.
After the debacle in March of 2023 an engineering review led to additional groundwater monitoring and relief wells placed within the working trench to prevent further damage. With those modifications in place, the project resumed briefly but was put on hold for the 2023 tourist season.
Work resumed in January 2024 and proceeded without major construction problems, but Northern Construction informed the town the cost of the project had doubled to $9 million because of the delays. The town ultimately settled with Northern Construction to pay an additional $ 2 million.
The line was finished in May 2024. By then, the settlement issue was already being tracked.
The town ordered the current work, over the contractor’s objections, to repair the section of the line that settled, creating a sag in the system that could cause waste to back up.
Work this year did repair most of the sagging area. The new line is made of 30-inch PVC pipe sitting on compacted gravel. Coyle said the run repaired has been digitally imaged and measured accurately and is stable.
Coyle said the tentative plan to fix the last 70-foot stretch is to replace the PVC pipe initially installed with ductile iron pipe. PVC, which is a form of plastic, is more flexible and can sag if the gravel below it erodes. Ductile iron pipe is far more rigid and would not sag, Coyle said.
Plus, for additional support, the current plan is to install steel beams under the pipe, which would work like joists holding up a floor. Those beams would be welded into the steel retaining walls that were pounded into the ground to stabilize the working trench.
The shift to iron pipe and welded beams will be more expensive. “We are talking with Northern about that now. We hope we can make it work within the appropriation we have,” Coyle said.
Through their attorney, leaders at Northern Construction, declined to comment.
When work begins again this fall, Water Street will once again be restricted to one lane in the construction zone with traffic detoured around it. The final fix will take another six to eight weeks of construction, if all goes well, Coyle said.
Meanwhile, sewage is flowing through the old line again, diverted there during this year’s construction.
“The only smart people in all this are the ones who put the pipe in the ocean in the 1960s,” said Russell “Rusty” Romboldi Jr., owner of Ziggy’s and the adjoining apartment building. “They must have known that there would be problems trying to dig it in 30 feet under Water Street.”
Michael Cohen can be reached at michael@plymouthindependent.org.