So what is going on with the pipes in the Tuckahoe Creek Service District?

The answer will depend on who you ask.

Over the past few months I’ve been posing questions about the pipe installation of 2004-2006, and I have received an array of answers.

What is interesting is that many of the reasons, and documents, used by Bryant Electric, in that company’s quest to prove to Goochland County that the pipes it had chosen to lay were going to at some point rebel, were cast aside by county administration in 2005.

But now, when we have a new county administrator, county attorney and utilities director, those same documents are being embraced and circulated to those who hold the promise of a warranty, to prove that, hey!

Maybe that contractor wasn’t just trying to pull one over on the county when it asked the Board of Supervisors in 2005, “Should we continue on this path with FRP or change to ductile iron?”

Bryant Electric added, yeah, ductile iron pipe material costs are higher. But staying with FRP material will entail additional remediation and increased long-term reliability costs.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a bit of truth in Bryant Electric’s claim. Maybe those Flowtite fiberglass reinforced polymer pipes weren’t so great, and maybe the county and those it employed weren’t surprised to learn this.

One person said to me last week, “Let me tie it all together for you. When problems started happening on that project, all fingers were pointing to the contractor, regardless of problems with the pipe itself. The distributor, contractor, manufacturer and county engineer all circled the wagons, and pointed to the contractor and the reason why was because the manufacturer wanted to maintain the good name of the pipe. And if the pipe was bad, if the design of the pipe was bad and insufficient, that makes all four of those guys look like they knew.”

Makes it look like maybe they knew it all along.

And so who is going to pay for that desire to keep knowledge in the shadows?

Yup.

Those that live and work in the Tuckahoe Creek Service District, those who will keep having their utility rates adjusted to accommodate the rising costs of maintaining a flawed system.

Sometimes it is the better part of valor to admit that you were wrong, and you want to make it right.

I think that would be a noble goal for some of those who set the rhythm, and the rates, of Goochland County.