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THE SEA COAST ECHO
Bay Council gets that
Members fear new drainage infrastructure may not be sound
BY MARY G. SEILEY £>taff Writer
Bay St. Louis City Council members may attack a potentially colossal infrastructure problem this afternoon, in an extra meeting set for 5:30 p.m.
Mayor Eddie Favre said Tuesday he'll be ready with recommendations concerning collapsing drainage pipe , connections underground in the historic downtown area. Only five or six problems have popped up so far, he said, but there may be dozens - or hundreds - in the failure process. And the' clock is ticking on the warranty that the city has covering the multi-million drainage project. Council had agreed to recess its regular monthly meeting until today, at Favre's request, in order to deal with this month's recommendations
from the Planning and Zoning Commission.
But a later discussion of the drainage pipe problem led to a promise by Favre to ready a recommendation by today on how to proceed with that issue.
Known as "Project C," the drainage improvement program at issue was completed several years ago by Colom Construction Co., at a cost of some $3.5 million. The engineering work was done by James J. Chiniche.
Before the construction was completed, officials noticed that more than 500 pipe joints had not been fully connected, the mayor said. That led to an agreement that those joints could -be sealed with a special grout.
"The literature assured us that the grout was. so strong, the pipe would break before the grout," said city attorney John Scafide during Tuesday night's meeting. But, he added, city Public Works Director Ron Vanney says the grout has broken in five or six spots.
That's led to sinking sur-
faces, officials say, within Project C. "We're just seeing isolated problems, but that doesn't mean there won't be more," Favre warned.
How to proceed from here is at issue. Some suggest hiring a firm to video the underground connections would determine how extensive a problem has developed. Others think Chiniche should analyze what's happened.
But Ward I council member Doug Seal is insisting that an independent engineering firm should be brought in to analyze the problem. Favre said perhaps a city worker could walk through the six-foot pipes and report on the joints.
Or, the mayor-said, he may call several engineering firms for proposals on assessing the drainage system's health.
"We need to identify, what caused it to fail," Favre said.
While the overall project had a one-year general warranty, which has expired, officials say they got an extra four-year warranty on the grouting work. That