Photo courtesy of the Goochland County Public Utilities Department
On December 9 this 48-inch force main burst along River Road, near the Randolph Square subdivision entrance. A
rectangular-shaped break was discovered in the pipe.

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On December 9 a force main broke on River Road, spilling 1,000 gallons of wastewater into Tuckahoe Creek.

The county thinks the pipe itself is to blame, while those involved with the installation think the line was never properly laid to begin with.

Either way, one county official admits Goochland might have a real problem on its hands.

And others worry the county won’t have the money to fix it.

The pipes of TCSD
Beneath Tuckahoe Creek Service District, a water and sewer system covering 8,000 acres and designed in anticipation of rapid commercial growth in the eastern end of Goochland County, stretches an eight-and-a-half-mile, 48-inch, force main sewer line.

Most of that line is made up of Flowtite fiberglass reinforced polymer (FRP) pipe, made by a company called Amitech at a plant in Zachary, Louisiana.

Bryant Electric, the contractor that installed this pipe between 2004 and 2006, had asked the county for more money and time to finish the project, saying that the county was negligent in listing FRP as an acceptable product for a force main system with restrained joints: The pipe, claimed Bryant Electric in a presentation to the Board of Supervisors in 2005, was prone to leaks caused by improper joint connections and uneven diameters.

Bryant Electric originally won the contract based on a bid of $9.1 million, which was based on using FRP pipe.

In June 2006, the contractor sued the county for $9.6 million, citing breach of contract.

The county argued that faulty installation, not a flawed product, was to blame for Bryant Electric’s problems in successfully laying the pipe.

But in September of 2007, the county offered Bryant Electric a $1 million settlement and released the contractor from any future claims related to the project.

And last January Goochland Public Utilities Director Gary A. DuVal wrote a letter to the pipe’s manufacturer, saying that a leak was discovered in the sewer line on December 9.

“The County has concluded that the pipe failed in this area due to defects in the pipe itself,” he wrote, “and we are concerned with the future of having miles of this pipe in our infrastructure.”

A force main breaks on River Road
According to reports obtained by The Gazette from Goochland County, the Goochland Sheriff’s Office notified the county’s public utilities department on December 9 that a waterline had broken along River Road, near the Randolph Square subdivision entrance.

County staff turned off the pumps in the Eastern Goochland Pump station and called G. L. Howard, a local utility construction company, to repair the break and restore service to a line that serves the eastern end of Goochland County and a portion of Henrico County.

In the meantime, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality reported that more than a thousand gallons of wastewater overflowed into the ditch line that leads to the Tuckahoe Creek.

The area was excavated and a rectangular-shaped break was discovered in the pipe, which was fixed by replacing a cut-out section with two repair couplings.

During a preliminary investigation, the overall circumference of the failed section was found to have three different dimensions, all within the one joint of pipe.

The repaired sections were installed, the couplings were tightened up and the line was put back in service by 9 p.m. on December 10.

The final bill from G.L. Howard was $46,871, which covered labor; the bill from H.D. Supply Waterworks, which covered two 48-inch steel couplings, was $4,136.

An extended 10-year warranty from Amitech USA, LLC, which manufactured the pipe, won’t cover the cost of the labor involved, but it should cover any materials found to be defective, according to a letter written by former County Administrator Gregory K. Wolfrey to Amitech in 2007.

“As I believe you know, Amitech provided FRP that did not meet the County’s specification, both in its testing and in its manufacturing of the pipe’s groove,” wrote Wolfrey when he accepted the manufacturer’s proposed warranty.

County Attorney Norman B. Sales says the warranty claim for the December 2009 break is still outstanding and the county is currently in litigation to recover those costs.

When the pipes were laid, Amitech USA was a subsidiary of Amiantit, a Saudi Arabian company. Amiantit sold Amitech to U.S. Composite Pipe South in 2008, which may jeopardize Goochland’s ability to collect on its warranty.

But Benjamin D. Hicks, once a controller at Amitech and currently a consulting director with New Orleans-based accounting firm Silva, Gurtner and Abney, said in a phone interview this week that although Amitech is no longer in business, an attorney in Richmond has been retained by the company and is working with Goochland to resolve the claim.

What caused the pipe to burst?
While the county says that defective materials caused the pipe failure last December, others stand by Goochland’s 2005 accusation of inadequate installation by Bryant Electric.

Kenneth L. Glasgow, who was a regional sales manager for U.S. Composite South at the time of the force main break, was asked by the county to visit the repair site the morning of December 9.

“From what I could see, and the county inspector with me agreed, the problem was poor installation,” said Glasgow in a phone interview last week. “Put it this way—when they were digging down, after they removed the busted pipe, I could hear the bucket of the excavator pounding on rock at the bottom of the trench. There’s no way any kind of pipe would have survived on that type of installation.”

Glasgow said that when contractors install pipe, consistent bedding, such as crushed stone, should be placed beneath the pipe to keep it from shifting when under pressure.

“It’s the same concept of having a pebble in your shoe,” he said. “If you’re standing on that pebble, it might not be big, but you have all the pressure of your foot on that one point and that’s why it hurts.”

Former Utilities Director Doug Harvey, who was working for Goochland at the time the sewer line was being installed in the TCSD, believes that Bryant Electric started off doing a good job but then ran into problems due to insufficient staffing.

“In the middle of it, they had a subcontractor who was laying 400 – 500 feet a day, but then they let him go,” said Harvey. “Later, after they announced they were getting out of the utility business and people started quitting, they couldn’t get 40 feet a day in. It had nothing to do with the pipe, it was about losing people who had been trained to put it in.”

When asked whether the pipe had broken on the bottom, which could indicate contact with exposed rock, Sales declined to comment until litigation with Amitech is resolved.

A combination of factors?
Glasgow, who no longer works for U.S. Composite Pipe South, says that Flowtite is not an easy pipe to make or install.

“I have concerns about it,” said Glasgow. “I’ve worked for four different pipe companies, and seen a lot of different manufacturing processes, and you have to be on your toes when making Flowtite pipe. The manufacturing process is really an amazing process, but things can get out of tune very easily and there’s a lot of different material- polyester resin, sand, fiberglass- and you’re essentially throwing all the materials together to be wound. It’s a computer-controlled operation, but it requires 2-3 people to monitor what’s going on in the machine.”

“The major weakness is the pipe joint itself,” he added. “I find that joint more difficult for contractors to work with.”

According to a report, written by a representative of Malcolm Pirnie, Inc. and sent to the City of Orlando’s Public Works Department, based on observations of a test of a 48-inch pipe performed by Amitech at their Louisiana plant in February of 2005, leaks occurred that prompted Orlando to remove Flowtite FRP pipe from its technical specifications.

“These failures caused us to be alarmed at… not only the use of the machined groove joint but also the entire pipe product,” wrote Steven J. Cook, Project Manager for Malcolm Pirnie, to Abe Jardaneh, Project Manager of the City of Orlando Public Works Department, on March 7, 2005.

“The failure in the 48-inch apparatus highlighted to us that Amitech USA is still resolving all the issues with the restrained joint pipe and joints,” added Cook.

R. Stuart Royer and Associates, who served as an engineer on the 2004-2006 force main project, requested a copy of those test results on March 30, 2005.

R. Stuart Royer and Associates was also a defendant in Bryant Electric’s breach of contract suit in 2006, and was acquired by Malcolm Pirnie in 2008.

The test results were used by Bryant Electric in 2005 to justify their case to Goochland that the pipes were defective.

And the same test results are now being used now by the county to verify their warranty against Amitech.

“Amitech invited engineers to see a pressure test, and ran a pressure test in front of them and the pipe split,” said Glasgow. “That’s not a very good way to sell a pipe.”

Paying for the pipes in the TCSD
Goochland’s District 4 Supervisor Malvern “Rudy” Butler said of the pipe system in the TCSD, “Keep your fingers crossed, I hope nothing happens to it.”

“I don’t know if there is enough money in there or not to repair it,” added Butler. “If installation was faulty, if they put it in wrong, it’s hard to get the money—Bryant Electric went out of business. And the people who made the pipe are out of business. I don’t know who would stand behind the warranty.”

DuVal is also concerned about funding any problems in the district.

“The county hasn’t really set aside money for any ongoing maintenance, for depreciation for a lot of things,” said the public utilities director. “What (County Administrator Rebecca T. Dickson) is working on for her latest budgets, the rates will be including possible future funds for that.”

The Board of Supervisors voted last April for an increased tax rate for Tuckahoe Creek Service District customers, up from 23 cents per $100 of assessed value to 27 cents.

Dickson says that the county is trying to catch up to future needs.

“As we developed the rates for (fiscal year 2011), we included some funds for repairs and maintenance,” she said this week. “This amount is $85,000. While this is a start, our goal would be to increase this amount to a higher level over time. If there were some kind of catastrophic event (or) failure that led to a much greater repair expense than what was budgeted, that would have to be addressed from the TCSD fund balance.”

Right now the county is trying to encourage investment in, and raise funds for, the TCSD.

One anticipated project is the West Creek Medical Center, a 97-bed, $183 million hospital on a 60-acre site at the West Creek office park.  This facility, planned by HCA, would provide jobs and revenue for the county.

And according to an interview with HCA spokesperson Karen Nelson last May, the hospital is on track to start building this fall.

“I think it’s very important to get to the bottom of this and see what kind of problem we have so we can address it properly,” said District 3 Supervisor Ned S. Creasey of potential pipe issues in the
TCSD. “I think we’re trying to bring people into the district, and there’s an urgency to get all this resolved.”