The engineering firm Woodard & Curran said it shares Winthrop’s concern over the water main breaks during last month’s snow storm – which the town has blamed on the company – and hopes to work jointly with town leaders to figure out solutions.

Woodard & Curran, a Maine-based specialist in water and environmental projects with some two dozen locations across the US, “has worked with the town of Winthrop for over 20 years, and we value our relationship with the town,” a company senior vice president, Jim Rivard, said of the situation.

“We recognize and share the community’s concern regarding the recent water main breaks during February’s heavy winter storm,” Mr Rivard, based in Andover, said in a written response to questions on the situation. “We are committed to supporting the town staff and other relevant parties through the assessment and response efforts.”

Mr Rivard offered the response after the February 23 storm that knocked out power to a quarter of Winthrop’s 8,500 households, sparking a cascade of events that included the loss of power to town water mains, breaking seven mains and flooding several homes.

Contractor identified

Town officials blamed the problem on a private vendor, accusing it or its partners of mismanaging the water system and its controls and valves, and of failing to monitor the installation. Winthrop leaders offered that explanation at an emotional Town Council meeting on March 10, and invited affected residents to file legal claims that the town would then pass to its insurance carrier.

“We’ve informed both our engineer and the contractors of this and we will be pursuing their insurances,” Steven Calla, the director of Winthrop’s Department of Public Works, told the Town Council and residents during an extended presentation on the situation.

At a question-and-answer session with residents two days later, the Town Council president, Jim Letterie, identified the lead engineering company as Woodard & Curran, a longtime partner of Winthrop, and reiterated his position that “what led to the water breaks was not the town’s fault.”

“It seems to have been the engineer and their vendors for not setting the proper pressures to the computer backup systems,” which allowed water from Revere to keep flowing during the power outage and overwhelm Winthrop’s underground pipe system, he said.

MWRA blame

Yet Mr Letterie also acknowledged some uncertainties in the public explanation of the event provided by town officials at the Council meeting. Mr Calla told that gathering that the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, the state water and sewer services agency, could have noticed problems with the valve settings – saying “we even had MWRA’s eyes on it” during construction – without noting if that observation might also apply to the town’s own workers.

Asked about that at his event, Mr Letterie said, “I don’t know,” and “that’s a good question.” The Town Council president then added: “I’m not blaming anybody specifically, but we were never shown, or never took responsibility, of maintaining all the settings, and how to maintain them, to do proper maintenance.”

Mr Letterie then allowed the possibility the town had reduced its maintenance budget, “because that usually is always one of the first things you cut in budget.” And he acknowledged that the underlying problem of relying on emergency valve settings to stop the water flow might have been mitigated if the town had bought and installed an emergency power generator, rather than relying just on backup batteries and system control settings to stop the water from Revere.

Mr Rivard is a former director of maintenance engineering at the MWRA. He and other leaders of Woodard & Curran declined to address details of the situation beyond their offering of concern and cooperation.

Understandable solution

At his community question-and-answer session, Mr Letterie also agreed repeatedly with a local resident who castigated town workers for driving a snow plow down Girdlestone Road despite an estimated foot of standing water produced by the water main break. The plowing broke apart a wall of snow that was containing the water, sending the water flooding into their homes, said the resident, Mark Sennott.

Mr Letterie blamed that element of the home flooding on a shortage of workers and a lack of training. “That’s a bad mistake, and it’s an easy correction” with better instruction for the workers, he said. It should be “common sense” for a town truck not to drive on a street that is flooded, Mr Letterie said. And the resulting damage, he said, “is going to be paid for by the insurance.”

The descriptions by town officials leave unclear the actual cost facing the residents of Winthrop generally and the affected homeowners in particular. The council’s vice president, Suzanne Swope, at her own gathering with residents, said that Winthrop was expected to spend about $500,000 on the effects of the storm, including costs related to the water main breakages.

At his session, Mr Letterie rejected the question of whether Winthrop should acknowledge to homeowners that fixing the water problems in some parts of the town are beyond the ability of the town and its taxpayers to manage or afford. The town has “a relatively understandable solution” for such problems, he said.