Plumbing issues plague water meter installations

AMENIA — Potential cost overruns to the town’s water meter installation project are a cause for concern to the Town Board.

In October 2007, after submitting the lowest bid of $195,678, National Metering Service of New Jersey was approved by the board to install water meters to the town’s water district customers.

Following a multitude of delays, the project started in April.

In an update to the Town Board on the installation of water meters, town Supervisor Wayne Euvrard said the company has installed 100 of 300 meters so far.

However, the company is running into problems due to additional plumbing needed to install the meters.

"In the contract we set aside $5,000 for additional plumbing, but some of these [installation costs] are getting out of hand," Euvrard said.

John Lazarony, an engineer from Morris Associates who is working for the town on the project, said some of the installations will require major plumbing revisions because of a lack of enough physical space to fit the meters in.

"It was assumed that the majority of parcels would not need these revisions, therefore, we set a contingency allowance for any plumbing revisions," Lazarony said. "In order to protect the town, it’s required in the contract that the town review and sign off on any changes [to individual plumbing] before any work is done in terms of any revisions due to plumbing issues."

Lazarony said that either the district should assume any extra cost of the installation of the meters or the individual homeowner should take care of the additional cost.

"Most other towns that have gone through this establish a [monetary] limit of cost, say $50 or $100 depending on the situation," he said. "[The town] would pay for the revision up to that limit and any cost over would be paid for by the individual parcel owner."

Euvrard said he recently reviewed the town’s contract with the company which said that before the company installed the meters, they were supposed to go out and inspect each house’s plumbing set up.

"They did not do that," Lazarony said. "In order to move the job along they opted not to do that. That’s why I don't think the town is in a bad position to hold off on any significant price increases. They were supposed to inspect every single home and tell us what the total budget would be before they started."

The board eventually voted to place a $100 limit per installation on what the town would pay for any extra plumbing work needed per parcel to install the meters. The money will come from the $5,000 in the contract for additional plumbing work.

If the additional plumbing work per parcel is estimated over $100, the installation will not proceed.

From there, the town will then tally up how much any additional plumbing work will cost for the remaining parcels and then determine how to proceed at a future board meeting.