HATFIELD — Calling it a “big pill to swallow,” town officials are preparing for significant cost increases for a $5.1 million water and sewer extension project on West Street, mainly to cover additional expenses related to police details and engineering.

The Select Board Tuesday unanimously voted to approve a $61,712 change order presented by Michael Ohl, an engineer from Comprehensive Environmental Inc. of Marlborough, leaving $40,000 in a contingency account for the project that is being handled by Geeleher Enterprises Inc. of Southampton.

But while the change order is coming out of current contingency for extending the sewer service on Route 5 from Linseed Road to Rocks Road, and water service for 2,200 feet along Route 5 south of Rocks Road, Ohl said an additional $200,000 to $350,000 is anticipated in police details, noting that for at least half the time as the project continues there will be three police details, at the new pump station site and along the gravity sewer line, with officers on each end and one in the middle.

This expense goes beyond the $180,000 extra that was built into police details and $200,000 for engineering when the town last year reached back out to MassWorks, which has supported the project with $3.5 million in grants.

“It’s a big pill to swallow, the overruns on this project,” Select Board Chairwoman Diana Szynal said. “And they just keep coming, and it’s frustrating.”

“The question, then, (is) where do we get the money,” Select Board member Ed Jaworski said.

Ohl explained that there were unforeseen delays in the project. The billing rate for police details, to the contractor, is roughly $80 per hour.

“It’s an order of magnitude number in terms of these future costs,” Ohl said. “It adds up surprisingly fast.”

Under typical circumstances, the town would reach back out to MassWorks, but officials have already gone back to the state agency.

Jaworski said the town couldn’t approach MassWorks without a definite number.

With engineering part of the overrun, Szynal asked if engineers should have known about some of the problems that have been encountered and if CEI should bear some responsibility for the higher costs. “We’ve spent a lot of extra money on engineering,” Szynal said.

Ohl said the two biggest issues were soil conditions, combined with the high groundwater, and the pump station issues and contesting of easements and the locations of some of this infrastructure.

Ohl defended his company’s work, noting that soil borings were done hundreds of feet apart, but there is a limit to how much exploratory drilling can be done to assess what’s beneath the ground. “Sometimes you get surprised,” Ohl said.

“We did what we should have during the design, it’s something that happens sometimes,” Ohl said. Ohl said there is much water at the surface and nowhere for it to go.

The project has also been slowed by unforeseen circumstances, including a high water table and poor soils, and dewatering of the project site is taking longer.

On the matter of the pump station, Ohl said the engineers discovered an inherent problem when property is taken by eminent domain, and is put at the mercy of trying to avoid or forestall litigation.

The change order approved by the board comes with a completion date of Dec. 31, 2023 for Geeleher to get the subsurface work done, and by June 30, 2024 for all remaining contract work to be completed and the new sewer flow to begin.

“This change order does come with completion dates, so that’s probably a good thing,” Jaworski said.

“Every single of dollar of this, including the engineering, needs to be as tight as possible,” Szynal said.

The project has been underway for almost three years and has also been the source of complaints from residents due to construction noise and debris.

Ohl presented a schedule showing that Geeleher is mobilizing crews this week and will install dewatering system for the gravity sewer in the last week of August, and that schedule should be met.

“I would hope so,” Jaworski said. “We’ve been issued a few schedules and they’ve failed to meet those schedules, and it’s been disappointing for the board, along with the residents and the whole town.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.]]>