City of Lock Haven Goes to Court, Seeking $13 Million from Sewage Treatment Plant Designers

LOCK HAVEN, PA – The City of Lock Haven this week went into Clinton County Court, seeking damages of $13 million or more from the designers of the city’s wastewater treatment plant. The civil suit was filed Wednesday against Larson Design Group, Inc. and O’Brien & Gere Engineers, Inc., the firms which did the design work for the city’s $32 million treatment plant located off S. Hanna Street.

The plant began operations in 2014 and the city claims it has not functioned properly since then, alleging operational issues due to inadequate design.

The city has been in mediation with the two design firms for more than a year, according to City Manager Greg Wilson, but so far they have provided “no remedy to the issues to the city’s multi-million-dollar claims.” Wilson said the city has been in discussion with the design firms even longer, about what he called “inefficiencies in operation,” spending six years of the plant’s 20 years of useful life “without any remedy provided by the design professionals.”

The filing in Clinton County Court demands a jury trial, the city seeking $13 million or more.

City manager Wilson told therecord-online he informed the city’s partners of its court action on Wednesday of this week:

“Yesterday I notified the city’s partners in the Clinton County Sewer Authority for which the city treats wastewater (Bald Eagle Township, Castanea Township, Flemington Borough, Mill Hall Borough, Woodward Township and East Nittany Joint Municipal Authority) of the following:

Today, the City of Lock Haven filed a complaint in the Clinton County Court of Common Pleas against the design professionals (Larson Design and their subcontractor O’Brien & Gere) who designed the new wastewater treatment plant which began operation in October 2014.

As you have been made aware in the past by both Sewer Superintendent Mike Glantz and former City Engineer Jason Dershem, the city has experienced operational issues with the plant since the startup of the plant in October 2014 which it is the city’s claim are the direct result of inadequate design. Among the city’s claims is also the discovery that the design professionals failed to test the influent prior to design to even know what type of wastewater the plant needed to treat which led to deficiencies process selection. In all, estimate to adequately remedy these claimed deficiencies in design range well upwards of $5 million.

Perhaps the best way to describe the overreaching issue is this: the old sewer plant treated the residential, commercial and industrial waste supplied to it, but didn’t meet the new DEP standards of nitrogen and phosphorous removal. What was promised was a brand-new plant that would treat the current waste stream, remove nitrogen, remove phosphorous, and allow for future growth all at a reduced operational burden and cost. What the city received, as you are all aware, is a plant that is more costly to operate which is split by all Clinton County Sewer Authority partners percent-to-flow. The process selected doesn’t adequately treat the waste stream received and still remove nitrogen biologically as supposedly designed to do without operating near maximum capacity which inhibits future growth and there are times the city does not meet the nitrogen removal limits because of the city’s claim of inadequate process selection. Finally, the solution implemented for the removal of phosphorous was to introduce a chemical, alum, which could have been introduced at the old plant just as easily. When the plant started it was operated under the direction of Larson Design operations were under the direction of Larson’s professionals and operating it as designed resulted in a discharge violation for which the city was fined $20,000 by DEP. While Larson’s representative stated that Larson would pay that fine, to this day Larson has failed to make good on that promise.”

Plant financing had been announced in 2012, including a $10 million state grant and $18 million in a loan at one percent for 20 years.