The Trenton Times published the following article on April 25, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Trenton council approves $850K contract for repairs on Ewing pipes, hydrants

By Erin Duffy/The Times of Trenton 
on April 25, 2013 at 8:50 AM

TRENTON — City council approved an $850,000 emergency contract last week to have a contractor scrub pipes and line water mains in a Ewing neighborhood where a homeburned to the ground in January when firefighters couldn’t draw water from nearby hydrants.

The work, already under way, should solve the weak water volume problems in Ewing’s Wynnewood Manor neighborhood, Trenton public works director Luis Mollinedo said.

Ewing officials and Clamer Road neighbors pointed the finger at Trenton Water Works in January after a devastating fire. Firefighters and onlookers said water only trickled out of nearby hydrants, leaving firefighters unable to pump enough water to battle the blaze.

In the aftermath, Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann and residents demanded that Trenton Water Works, the city-owned water utility that serves Ewing and several other suburbs, increase the gallons per minute capacity for hydrants and replace or realign any aging pipes that may have been constricting water flow.

Mollinedo said a water volume study found the 6-inch mains in the Wynnewood Manor neighborhood were suffering from tuberculation — a build-up of rust, stalagmites and other substances that harden and block pipes, reducing water volume. The city is finishing a five-year plan to clean pipes and line them with concrete to prevent build-up, but with 630 miles of pipe laid through Trenton, Ewing, Hamilton, Lawrence and Hopewell Township, Water Works hadn’t gotten to Wynnewood Manor yet.

“When Ewing brought it to our attention, that they no longer felt that the water level in that area was adequate for their fire needs, we reacted,” Mollinedo said. “We declared an emergency based on the requests from the fire department and based on the fact that there was a fire and based on our knowledge of the condition of the pipes and we addressed it immediately.”

The contractor, Basking Ridge-based Dewcon, Inc., is currently flushing out mains and lining them with cement mortar. Once the job is finished in two to three months, water should be flowing at a rate of up to 1,000 gallons per minute, up from the current 350 gallons, Mollinedo said.

Ewing business administrator Jim McManimon confirmed the work on Clamer is ongoing and said TWW installed some temporary pipes as well while Dewcon finishes the work.

“We had meetings with the fire chiefs and fire code officials as to what was required back there and that’s when Trenton Water Works said they would provide us with the upgrades,” he said. “We’re not saying they were at fault for anything, but it’s obvious the hydrants didn’t work, that’s well-documented.”

Mollinedo also met yesterday with city business administrator Sam Hutchinson to discuss the number of emergency contracts requested by TWW and the public works department. Council approved nine emergency contracts at last week’s meeting, raising eyebrows at the state Department of Community Affairs, which oversees some city purchasing.

Mollinedo said the city was forced to resort to emergency contracts, which allow a municipality to bypass public bidding laws, because of staff shortages in Trenton Water Works and a number of water leaks this winter caused by frigid temperatures. The water utility is slowly adding more staff, increasing maintenance work that can prevent some emergencies and allowing the city to do more repair work in-house, instead of farming the work out to contractors, he said.

“We’re now putting humpty dumpty back where there’s actually going to be a much more functional entity, where we will be able to anticipate some of the issues that still plague us on an operational basis and try and deal with it before it becomes, quote-unquote, an emergency,” Mollinedo said.