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Veolia proposes to replace rather than rebuild
July 05, 2004 -
LEE -- Town meeting representatives will have a tough decision at
Thursday's special town meeting: Whether the possible cash savings of
the privatization of the town's sewer and water systems outweigh the
perceived loss of control of such a facility and the transfer of town
jobs to a private company.
But town officials stressed that
Thursday's meeting, slated for 7 p.m. at the Zukowski Performing Arts
Center at Lee High School, should be focused on a more preliminary step:
Whether the town representatives believe that the negotiations should
begin at all.
Last Thursday night, Veolia Water of
Houston presented a plan to build a new waste-water treatment plant and
upgrade the town's water-distribution system for $12.3 million. That
fell considerably under other proposals which laid out budgets of $14
million to $16 million for retrofitting the current plant.
That $2 million to $3 million in savings
is augmented by an estimated $6.3 million in savings over the 20-year
life of the proposed plant. At the same time, however, this setup would
result in the transfer of a total of seven local jobs from the town to
Veolia Water.
Veolia officials have assured the town,
and those employees, that no jobs would be eliminated by the changeover.
But that situation, more than anything else, is the center of the
anxiety on the part of town employees and town representatives.
The immediate issue the town
representatives face Thursday is whether to allow the town to pursue
negotiations with Veolia. Should they do so, the town would then have to
negotiate a contract, and then return to the town representatives for
another special town meeting vote at some point in the future.
"If you decide to negotiate,"
said Finance Committee member David Parker, "you have to assume you
will arrive at a successful conclusion. Because if you negotiate, and
you don't arrive at a successful conclusion, then you have lost that
negotiation time."
Last Thursday's meeting appeared to clear
up a number of issues, town representatives said. One of the foremost
was why, if this was a potential $15 million to $16 million project for
some company, was there only one bidder?
Town Administrator Robert Nason explained
that interest in the project was high. The town advertised a request for
proposals (RFP) in several publications, including the Central Register,
a statewide publication that lists municipal projects of all kinds.
Nason reported on Thursday that 49
vendors took home the bid packages. He said he did not know why only one
returned it.
Christopher J. Hodgkins, a vice president
and general manager at Veolia, thought he knew.
"We know what our competitors are
doing," he said. "We all know what each other is doing."
Hodgkins said his assessment was that the
town's stipulation that the waste-water treatment system be the Zanex
system may have scared some bidders off. The Zanex system, according to
Mary Beth Bianconi, another Veolia official, has difficulty filtering
out waste in subzero temperatures, a situation which would probably come
up in Lee during the winter.
Hodgkins said Veolia offered another bid
package for an "SBR," or sequencing batch reactor system,
which is not as temperature-sensitive. Preparing a second bid package
for the Lee project cost money, said Hodgkins, but Veolia officials felt
it would be a better fit for the town.
Hodgkins said he believed Veolia's
decision to go the extra mile and offer a better alternative made the
bid package more attractive.
Former Schenectady, N.Y., Mayor Albert
Jurczynski attended last Thursday's meeting in support of Veolia. In the
six years he worked with Veolia officials, he said, "you could not
have wanted a better partner."
Jurczynski said when his city initially
decided to enter into a public-private partnership with Veolia, public
employees had similar emotions as those in Lee.
"There was tremendous concern,"
he said. "City employees and their spouses wrote nasty letters to
the editor. They were very serious about not wanting the city to give
[the municipal sewer and water systems] up."
But, Jurczynski said, he believed that a
vast majority of workers at the sewer and water plants are now satisfied
with their situation.
James Malloy, the town administrator of
Sturbridge, agreed that working with Veolia "has been a very
collaborative relationship. Whenever we've had an issue, we've been able
to work it out."
Some of the people in attendance were
skeptical of a plan to build a new plant that was cheaper than a plan to
renovate an old one. But Richard LaVoie, a Veolia senior area manager
for the New York, Connecticut and Western Massachusetts zone, pointed
out that the logistical problem connected to rebuilding the old plant is
that the facility would have to remain online while the work was going
on.
This, he said, would push the
construction time line to six months more than that involved in building
a new plant.
"We can build the new plant right
next to the old one," he said. "And we can do it faster."
LaVoie said the $12.3 million figure for
the new plant also includes the demolition costs for the old facility.
Also in that budget are funds for repairs to the distribution system and
an upgraded meter-reading system. |