Harbour cleanup delayed 3 months

Harbour cleanup delayed 3 months

Penalties could save city $3m

By AMY PUGSLEY FRASER City Hall Reporter

Halifax Harbour’s sewage cleanup project is backed up by three months but the delay could save city hall $3 million, says the project director.
"From HRM’s point of view, this is a positive financial story," Brad Anguish told councillors Tuesday night at the regular weekly meeting.
"Albeit, nobody is happy that we’re not receiving the environmental benefits when we thought we would."
The $333-million Harbour Solutions project includes a $133-million contract to D&D Water Solutions Ltd. for the design, construction and commissioning of three sewage treatment plants in Halifax, Dartmouth and Herring Cove.
Mr. Anguish told council Tuesday night that the contractor, jointly owned by Dexter Construction Co. Ltd. and Degremont Ltee., has pushed the system startup to September 2008.
"But our water quality objectives are still on track for 2008," he said.
The delay is attributed to difficulties procuring equipment, design co-ordination and code interpretation with subcontractors and the availability of short-notice labour to make up the schedule, Mr. Anguish said.
"You can throw all kinds of money at this problem but the reality is, the labour isn’t always there when you want it anymore."
The confined space within the Halifax treatment plant also limits the work, he said.
Taxpayers won’t get dinged for the delay, he said.
In fact, everything is on budget and it could get cheaper.
"While it’s a penalty to the contractor, it’s a potential savings to HRM," Mr. Anguish said.
That’s because of a clause in the original contract that guarantees a maximum price and deletes the inflation adjustment for the developer if it goes over the project completion date.
"Given the very high inflation that’s happened in the construction index over the past three years, this is quite a substantial penalty," he said.
Rough calculations mean that D&D Water Solutions could lose as much as $2.5 million to $3 million, he said.
"So there is a significant financial incentive to continue to perform and meet schedule whenever possible."
As a result, he said, D&D could still finish on time.
"While it can get later, it can also get sooner," he said.
Mayor Peter Kelly, who named the cleanup of Halifax Harbour among his key issues in the last mayoral campaign in 2004, said the delay is not unusual.
"In a project of this scope with a time frame of almost five years, a delay of three months is not at all uncommon," he said Tuesday night.
"In this case, it demonstrates our contractor’s diligence in ensuring that every element of this massive project is completed to HRM’s very stringent specifications, as well as those of the federal and provincial governments."
The Harbour Solutions project is designed to stop the flow of more than 180 million litres of untreated waste water into Halifax Harbour every day.
( apugsley@herald.ca)

I had not realized that Mayor Peter Kelly had made it one of his key issues to resolve in his last mayoral campaign in 2004. I was happy to read that because the cleanup is much needed. It is important that environmental issues are being looked at as valuable and imperative to fix and maintain a better quality of our water.