Water plant mediation held behind closed doors

By Mallory Panuska
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT August 30, 2008 01:48 am

— A legal mediation session between Fairmont officials and professionals involved with the sale and construction of the city’s faulty $40 million membrane-bound water plant were held this week behind closed doors.
City Attorney Kevin Sansalone, who was one of the three city staff members slated to attend Thursday’s session, said that the details discussed during the meeting and all discussions surrounding those details are confidential. But he said the city is continuing to evaluate its options.
Sansalone, City Finance Director Eileen Layman, and City Utilities Manager Dave Sago were all slated to attend the session.
Officials have said that engineers and legal counsel from STRAND Associates, the Wisconsin-based corrective action engineering firm hired to assess the problems at the plant and make recommendations and repairs, were also set to attend the meeting. Also attending the session were legal counsel and officials from Chapman Technical Group, the water plant engineers and designers, and GE Zenon Environmental, the plant’s manufacturers.
City Planner Jay Rogers said the mediation session was completed Thursday but he did not have any further information about the session or any details surrounding it on Friday afternoon.
On Aug. 19, council members met in executive session, and City Manager Jim Snider said one of the topics of discussion was the strategy the city would take during the mediation. And Rogers said city staff met at least once since that meeting to go over the details.
City officials have said they believe that Chapman and Zenon are responsible for a pair of water emergencies that occurred within the 5-year-old system during the winter of 2007.
At that time, the membranes in the plant were getting clogged with residue from it’s Tygart River source, slowing water production to a point too low to completely meet the high demand of all of its customers. This left some customers with little to no pressure and led to boil-water advisories for several days at a time.
If possible, city officials have said they would like to receive at least some compensation from these two companies to pay for the costly consequences of the crises. Snider has said that if things are not worked out in mediation, the city is prepared to go to litigation over the issue.
Council is prepared to introduce a 50.7 percent customer rate increase to pay for the short- and long-term system improvements that STRAND officials deemed necessary to bring the plant back up to par.
The increase was taken off of the agenda during council’s July 23 meeting pending the results of Thursday’s mediation. Snider said at that time that he planned on introducing that or a revised percentage hike at the next council meeting set for Sept. 9.
Currently, an $8.7 million project is in the planning stages, and a short-term project was completed last year to get the plant through this past winter without any problems.
The city has also purchased additional membranes for the system and Zenon recently introduced a $400,000 hike in the annual payments required for the membrane reserve account. All of these costs rolled together are what the potential 50.7 percent increase was based on, Snider has explained.
E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.