Freeport Council could change engineering firms to complete sewage project

Miscalculated sewage project costs and a perceived lack of service have spurred Freeport Council to shop for a new engineering firm.

Councilman Clinton Warnick said at a council meeting last week that he wants to hire Latrobe-based Gibson-Thomas Engineering to replace KLH Engineers for Phase II of its sewage treatment plant project.

“I’ve seen what KLH has to offer, and it’s considerably less than what (Gibson-Thomas) has,” Warnick said.

Kevin Creagh, the KLH engineer on the project, declined to comment on Warnick’s criticisms.

Freeport has been working for months to improve its sewage treatment system, under pressure from state and federal environmental agencies.

The borough’s sewage flows through the same pipes that collect water from its storm sewers. Because the sewer system is combined, both sewage and rainwater is piped to the sewage treatment plant. During heavy rainstorms, the treatment plant can’t handle the flow, and raw sewage spills into the Allegheny River.

State and federal environmental officials require the system to capture and treat 85% of its sewage flow before being released into the river. But the borough’s treatment plant, built in the late 1950s, is capturing only about 75% of the sewage flow from its 800 customers.

In an attempt to meet the government mandate, council agreed in 2017 to undertake construction of a new treatment plant. KLH at the time estimated the cost at $11.6 million.

Creagh told council in October that the actual cost would be about $16 million. He said the original cost was miscalculated because it was based on a 2011 construction estimate. That means it was outdated by six years when council approved the sewage project in 2017.

Creagh was not the engineer on the project in 2017. Creagh said the original client representative didn’t keep the council updated on the growing costs of the project. That employee is no longer with the company, he said.

“I thought it would be unethical not to update them,” Creagh said. “I knew I would be delivering the bad news, but it’s better to be truthful upfront.”

Creagh said the borough has paid all of its outstanding bills to KLH, and if they do decide to switch engineering firms, there would be no additional expenses.

But now Freeport must find a way to come up with the additional $4.4 million to finish the project.

Borough officials had borrowed from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority, also known as PennVEST, for the first phase of the project in 2017. PennVEST provided a $920,600 loan for the borough to separate storm and sanitary sewer lines near the current treatment plant. That phase of the project, which originally had been estimated at $668,000, will end up costing between $800,000 and $850,000, Creagh has said.

Borough officials had hoped to take out another loan with PennVEST to finance the plant and then repay the low-interest loan through increased sewage fees. But Warnick and Mayor Jim Swartz met with PennVEST officials last week to discuss another loan for the additional expenses, and Swartz said PennVEST would not provide additional funding.

“They made that real clear,” Swartz told council.

Brent Sailhamer, legislative and media relations specialist at PennVEST, said the agency would still be willing to finance another loan for the borough, once more details are ironed out. Sailhamer said that with plans like these, there are often approvals needed from the Department of Environmental Protection and other agencies. At the time of the meeting last week, Sailhamer said the Freeport officials didn’t have all of those details completed and did not know the final costs associated with the new plan.

“There is no restriction on borrowers coming in more than once,” Sailhamer said.

Council is reviewing its options and trying to figure out a path forward as it faces a deadline to show that it is moving ahead on its long-term sewage control plan.

Warnick said Gibson-Thomas offered to provide some options to Freeport.

“He’s looking at some options for us as far as scaling of the plant,” Warnick said. “Maybe trying to catch some of the runoff water other than through the sewage system.”

Councilman Dino DiGiacobbe said council should consider more than one new engineering firm, noting that it always considers several options in making similar decisions.

Warnick said he contacted Senate Engineering but received no response. He noted that the PennVEST official with whom they spoke regarded Gibson-Thomas very highly. He said he had no interest in interviewing other companies.

“To interview people takes time, and we don’t have that,” Warnick said.

He eventually relented after other council members said they thought it would be wise to contact at least a couple more engineering firms to see what they have to offer.

Warnick said he hopes to have everything related to the sewage project resolved by mid-December.

Warnick declined to comment this week on any progress. Ed Schmitt, vice president at Gibson-Thomas, said Freeport had not officially hired the firm and could not provide a cost estimate for the remainder of the project.

Tom Yerace is a freelance writer. Teghan Simonton is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Teghan at 724-226-4680, via email at tsimonton@tribweb.com or via Twitter @teghan_simonton.