Last week the Select Board asked the state Department of Revenue to increase the excluded debt voters approved last year for the project that will enable Harvard to draw its municipal water supply from Devens. The department granted that request, with the caveat that voters approve the increase by a two-thirds majority at a Town Meeting.
Last month’s bids on the project exceeded the $4.85 million voters agreed to at a Special Town Meeting in February last year and at the polls a few months later. While an election is not required to increase the debt by the additional $2.3 million needed, Town Meeting must authorize a bond for the higher amount because there will be additional costs associated with the new bond.
The town was unaware of the Town Meeting requirement when it requested the increase, but the Select Board voted unanimously at its April 30 meeting to call a Special Town Meeting for May 14. It also approved the single article warrant and closed it.
Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro told the Press that the bids on the water project will be good through May 15. If voters authorize the new bond amount, the contracts for the pump station and the water main will be awarded to the low bidders. It’s unclear what next steps will be taken if the town doesn’t approve.
Tighe & Bond, the engineering firm designing the project, provided the town with a cost analysis explaining why construction bids exceeded its 2022 estimate. The original estimate needed to be done early as part of the submission to the State Revolving Fund Drinking Water Program to apply for a low-interest loan. At that time, estimates were based on recently bid similar projects.
In its analysis, engineers said the original plan for the pump station was a small, pre-engineered building. But the firm switched to a traditional masonry building during the design phase based on project experience, and that bumped up the price tag.
The analysis also included a number of “unexpected regulatory and private industry-imposed burdens,” totaling over $1.6 million in increased costs, some in the water main project, and some in the pump station project.
The most expensive of those burdens was an increase in the price of American-made 12-inch ductile iron pipe, from an estimated $175 per linear foot to the low bidder’s price of $265 per linear foot. The water main requires almost 9,000 feet of this pipe, which added about an $800,000 unanticipated cost. The pipe must be made with American iron to meet the requirements of the State Revolving Fund loan program, which granted Harvard the low-interest loan.
The railroad company, CSX, was responsible for an additional $510,000 increase in the water main project. Pipes must be installed under the railroad crossing near the spot where the pump station will be built. In the original estimate, the cost of installing those pipes was based on using “directional drilling,” or simply drilling horizontally underneath the tracks. But CSX told the firm that this type of drilling is only “conditionally approved,” and a lengthy approval process would have been necessary to use it. Instead, the firm changed the design to use the method CSX asked for, called “pipe jacking.” That method is more expensive because of the limited number of contractors capable of doing the work.
Steel casing for pipes
In addition, CSX required that pipes under the tracks be installed inside a steel casing so that repairs would not disrupt the tracks. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation also required that pipes installed below a Route 2 overpass, which is in its right of way, be encased in steel pipe. That added another $120,000 to the water main price.
When the 2022 estimate was done, the site for the pump station was not yet known. During site analysis, Devens land was chosen as the most practical location. Devens’ building code requires every building to have a sprinkler system, regardless of size or occupancy. Sprinklers increased the pump station cost by about $67,000.
The price of fire hydrants in the low bid was double what Tighe & Bond expected—$12,000 per hydrant. That added $108,000 for the hydrants to be installed along the new water line on Depot Road.
Meanwhile, last December, the Massachusetts Plumbing Board revised some of its codes, and it now requires “a unisex accessible bathroom in unoccupied structures such as pump stations.” Tighe & Bond requested a variance because the pump station design was “substantially complete” before the code was changed. The request was denied at the plumbing board’s April 3 meeting. To avoid redesigning the pump station to fit a toilet, engineers are considering installing a composting toilet outside the station. The cost is not yet known, but this addition would be included in the project as a change order and would be covered by the construction contingency.
