8A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 2016
Water: ‘We have aging infrastructure across the nation’
Continued from Page 1A
The city pays to pump and
treat water, so money is lost
when some of that water leaves
the system, doesn’t reach a
paying customer or isn’t accu-
rately metered.
“If you have an old meter,
it can be as much as 20 percent
off,” Dunn said, “so the cus-
tomers would be billed 20 per-
cent less, basically.”
Iniltration and inlow
On the wastewater end,
cracks in pipes pull groundwa-
ter into the sewage system —
a process called “iniltration”
— before reaching a pump sta-
tion or the wastewater treat-
ment plant.
Added to this is the water
“inlow” from cross-connected
pipes, like residential down-
spouts, that should be con-
nected to the city’s separate
stormwater system rather than
the sewage system.
During wet weather, as
much as 50 percent of the
water that enters the wastewa-
ter treatment plant should not
be in there.
Iniltration and inlow (I/I)
reduces capacity at the plant,
and the greater low is more
Erick Bengel/The Daily Astorian
This sequencing batch reactor is part of Warrenton’s wastewater treatment plant, which
— in addition to the water flowing in — will also treat a lot of groundwater that leaked
into the sewage pipes during periods of wet weather.
energy intensive — and more
expensive — to treat.
“We can only handle
so much water through the
(wastewater) treatment plant,”
Dunn said, adding that “if we
go over that amount, then we
would violate our permit.”
Capacity and growth
Water leakage and I/I are
not unique to Warrenton.
“We have aging infrastructure
across the nation,” Dunn said.
“These pipes don’t last forever.”
Though the city has long
discussed the costly cracks,
Paciic Coast Seafood’s plans
to rebuild in Warrenton got
the city thinking more deeply
about the issue. The compa-
ny’s former Warrenton loca-
tion burned down in 2013.
Paciic Coast Seafood is
“such a big user of water,
which is really good because
that makes money for the
city,” Community Develop-
ment Director Skip Urling
said. “But all that water has
to go into the sanitary sewage
treatment system.”
The promise of more indus-
try and more residents moving
into town is prompting the city
to assess the capacity at the
wastewater treatment plant —
how much low it can handle
— so Warrenton’s discharge
doesn’t overwhelm the sewage
system.
As Warrenton grows, the
city will need to expand the
treatment plant, an expensive
project that will become neces-
sary much sooner if a 50-per-
cent iniltration and inlow
continues to eat up capacity.
“You’re saving future costs
by eliminating I/I,” Dunn said.
In progress
A crew recently repaired
the leaking transmission main
from the Lewis and Clark
River to the water treatment
plant. And the city is currently
ixing the defective meters and
installing new meters in unme-
tered areas, like at the Warren-
ton Mooring Basin.
For this iscal year, the
City Commission raised the
city’s water rates 7 percent
and sewer rates 6 percent to
compensate for years of post-
poning rate hikes that support
Warrenton’s infrastructure.
The rates, which will be
revisited on an annual basis,
will help plug the holes and
mend the cracks.
“That’s really going to
help us improve the system
over time,” Dunn told the
commission.
Dunn and his team are in
the preplanning phase of cap-
ital improvement projects to
address water leakage. Mean-
while, the commission has
approved a water system mas-
ter plan, due to the state by
2018, and an iniltration and
inlow study.
“You’re always going to
have some leaks in your sys-
tem. Every system has some
water leaks, it has some sewer
iniltration,” Dunn said. “But,
generally speaking, you want
to keep it as low as possible.”
ODOT: Poor compaction, low density is department’s ‘biggest problem’
Continued from Page 1A
“Quality control was not
taken seriously,” says Bret
Alford, a longtime Depart-
ment of Transoportation quali-
ty-control specialist who left the
agency in 2012. Oregon’s con-
tractor-driven oversight system,
he adds, “Seems like the fox
guarding the hens to me.”
ODOT’s oversight sys-
tem creates a “huge risk of
fraud,” former department inter-
nal auditor Mary Hull Cabal-
lero, who investigated the state
agency’s construction practices
extensively, told Secretary of
State auditors in 2013, accord-
ing to a summary of the audi-
tors’ interview. Hull Caballero,
who is now the city of Portland’s
elected auditor, declined to com-
ment for this story.
While there are plenty of
good contractors out there, “it
is so easy for a contractor to fal-
sify documentation,” says Carol
Putnam, a former ODOT qual-
ity assurance specialist who left
the department in 2013. “We
don’t know what goes on behind
closed doors.”
In 2014, the Federal High-
way Administration communi-
cated the results of a top-to-bot-
tom review of Oregon’s quality
control for road construction
conducted the previous year.
Its recommendations largely
echoed a report it issued in 2005.
Rudimentary quality
checks
Since 2005, federal highway
oficials have urged Oregon to
pursue electronic data collec-
tion of quality test results and
to use statistical comparisons to
look for anomalies and bogus
reporting.
Oregon, instead, does not
systematically track quality
results or use the statistical tests
that are common in other states,
according to the federal review.
Instead of tracking numerous
results statistically, a technician
will simply compare the state’s
result to the contractor’s inding
during the spot-check conducted
on 10 percent of tests.
“This method of veriication
is very weak and will only detect
severe problems with contractor
test results,” according to a 2013
Federal Highway Administra-
tion report.
Much as it did when the
highway administration made
the same recommendation in
2005, ODOT has promised to
launch a study of the issue. In
July, work began on a $300,000
study by a Texas A&M Trans-
portation Institute researcher
who formerly worked for the
pavement industry.
Not only is Oregon’s rudi-
mentary spot-check method
weak and vulnerable to fraud,
the state doesn’t do enough
spot-checking to determine if it
has a problem, according to the
feds.
In a November 2014 memo
requesting funding to study
potential quality improvements,
ODOT’s top quality assurance
engineer, Greg Stellmach, wrote
that data gathered that year sug-
gested that contractors are not
following state transportation
rules on random quality testing.
That, in turn, can have a “huge
impact” on the department’s
spending on asphalt, he wrote.
Faulty asphalt test
Oregon’s roads use asphalt
generated by privately owned
asphalt plants. Oregon, how-
ever, continues to test the asphalt
at the plant itself, using a sys-
tem that allows the plant oper-
ator to know generally when
the contractor’s self-test sam-
ple is supposed to be taken. That
allows the operator to temporar-
ily “optimize” the asphalt mix to
meet quality standards, accord-
ing to the 2014 memo by Stell-
mach, the ODOT quality expert.
Not only that, but the plant oper-
ator has plenty of time to switch
to a different mix when it sees a
state quality technician drive up
to double-check the contractor’s
self-test, according to the federal
audit.
Fraud by asphalt plants is
not an abstract concern. Doc-
uments show that in 2008, an
Department of Transportation
pavement engineer resigned in
protest and warned the Federal
Highway Administration of an
“unethical” failure by ODOT
management to investigate what
he concluded was contractor
fraud by an asphalt supplier.
Similarly, Alford, the for-
mer ODOT quality special-
ist, says he heard from a friend
who worked for an asphalt con-
tractor that there literally was a
switch the operator could lip to
meet quality standards when the
ODOT inspector showed up.
Oregon is the only state west
of the Rockies to still test at the
plant. Most western states test
closer to the paving machine as
it lays asphalt on the roadbed.
ODOT Construction and
Materials Engineer Joe Squire
says testing the asphalt behind
the paver would endanger the
employee doing the testing.
However, a 2007 University of
Illinois survey of state depart-
ments of transportation found
that “sampling behind the paver
is being conducted by many
states without much dificulty.”
A recipe for potholes
Another major issue for
ODOT is compaction, mean-
ing the use of those giant yellow
rollers to get the asphalt to meet
the required minimum density.
Density tests after compaction
are used to determine bonus
payments to contractors.
A Portland-area ODOT
project manager, Ron Larson,
explained the issue to state audi-
tors in 2013. “The higher the
compaction, the longer (the
roadway) lasts,” he said, accord-
ing to notes of his interview.
“Problems in this area are what
eventually form potholes.”
Poor compaction and low
density, he said, is ODOT’s
“biggest problem” on projects
that go bad.
And yet contractors can
use rollers to game the den-
sity tests, as ODOT oficials
have acknowledged. The con-
tractors whose rollers are com-
pacting the asphalt often know
in advance the locations where
the density of their product is
going to be tested, allowing
them to manipulate the system,
according to ODOT’s top qual-
ity expert.
“Frequently the locations
that the density shots should be
taken at are marked along the
pavement at the tonnage where
the test needs to be taken,” Stell-
mach wrote in the 2014 ODOT
document discussing weak-
nesses in Oregon’s system.
“This allows the roller opera-
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Contractor
technicians
who cheat on tests face poten-
tial criminal charges and ines.
Squire and Stellmach noted
the state has suspended sev-
eral technicians in recent years,
one of whom was suspected of
fraudulent misrepresentation.
Alford, for his part, says he
saw a dynamic at ODOT that
was focused on getting things
done on time as well as exces-
sive coziness between contrac-
tors and his coworkers, includ-
ing project managers. Once,
he protested that he would sign
only truthful quality reports. A
manager responded that Alford
would sign whatever report he
was told, “or I would be out of a
job,” Alford recalls.
W A NTED
Contact Barbara
503-468-8219
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tors to be aware of test locations
and potentially inluences the
pattern that they make in roll-
ing the asphalt. The (contrac-
tors’) density technician may
also ask the roller operator to do
additional compaction in a loca-
tion that has not met compaction
requirements.”
Stellmach, in a telephone
interview in which his boss,
Joe Squire, and two public rela-
tions specialists were listen-
ing in, said that he has no evi-
dence that gaming the system is
a problem. Squire, for his part,
said “the vast majority of pave-
ments within the Oregon high-
ways system is rated fair to good
or better, which is very high
among states.”
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