INFO-2021-1 : Request for Information - Vinton/Fellsway pipe breakage

Transcript (~36 min @ 22:52)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 22:51 Speaker 1: This motion passes. Thanks for coming.

▶ 22:53 Speaker 4: Thanks so much. Have a good night.

▶ 22:57 Speaker 1: And the final order on our agenda tonight

▶ 23:01 John N. Tramontozzi: is order info 21, excuse me, 2021-1, request for information, Vinton slash Felsway pipe breakage. And that's sponsored by Councilor Tramontozzi. So if you'd like to introduce the order. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. vice chair but chairman for this evening i had requested this information informational item as we all know about the water main break on vinton street the fellsway i wanted to get some information and i wanted to get some answers some questions that i had you know what caused the breakage what's going to take to repair what's the cost who's responsible for the class and so forth since my initial request i have and i have been in communication with the massachusetts water resources authority they've been giving me some weekly updates and i appreciated that specifically mr sean nathan at the he's the director of intergovernmental affairs and he's been kind enough to keep me posted with some weekly updates his last weekly update was last tuesday wherein he said that the contractor rjv has activated water services to the homes the crews have removed temporary bypass and cleaned up the overall site all remaining items have been demobilized traffic detour signs have been removed and vinton street is officially open and operational that's the last update that i had i've been by there on numerous occasions watching the construction. I appreciate the fact that the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority has stepped up to the plate and did the repairs there. But there still is left unanswered questions. What caused it to begin with? And what's the overall impact to the city and cost? It appears to me that still paving needs to be done, final paving, there's paving and markings and stripes that have been placed on the roadway. And I'd like to get some further answers. I think Mr. McSweeney had some good ideas and suggestions about what's going to happen with that roadway as a passageway to the Roosevelt School and to the Fouseway. My thought is that I would like to hold this in committee, invite the Director of Public Works to appear before us, and be prepared to address any of the concerns and questions that we might have. That will give us an opportunity at a later date at the next hearing for her to give us a presentation and what would be the next in line.

▶ 26:03 Speaker 5: Point of information, our director of public works is here this evening and she's planning on speaking.

▶ 26:07 John N. Tramontozzi: There you are in the back there, I didn't see you. Well, come on over if you want.

▶ 26:14 Speaker 1: And actually, I have two members of the MWRA. Terrific.

▶ 26:18 John N. Tramontozzi: And I prepared a presentation if you'd like me to- Yeah, my apologies, I did not realize that you were here in the anticipation of this. I thought it was just going to be taken up at a later date. Perfect, let's do it. Okay.

▶ 26:32 Speaker 1: thanks chris i didn't let me know thank you mr chair um um through and through you to the council

▶ 26:44 Speaker 1: um yeah i'd like to introduce myself i'm david kopis i'm the chief operating officer for the massachusetts water resources authority and with me is corey barrett our director of construction we've prepared a short powerpoint presentation with some photos of the construction in order to be a responsive counselor to the concerns that you raised but before we get started i'd like to take a minute to thank everyone in the room for their partnership and for their patience with the mwra as we as we move to repair this water main and reconstruct the surrounding area director elena proicus ellis counselor and others who are involved on behalf of the city of melrose we appreciate your assistance in getting this job done quickly and effectively and as we always do we try to leave the area in a better state than when we started i hope when we're completed with this that you'll agree that we've done that so

▶ 27:53 Speaker 1: if you could go to the first slide please i can describe what happened on the evening of tuesday evening of april 27th around eight o'clock at night our operations control center received low pressure alarms and around the same time we received calls from the melrose dpw about water leaking at the surface near the intersection of vinton street and the lynn fells way this is a picture that we took at that night when we arrived on the scene

▶ 28:26 Speaker 1: you can go to the next slide this is an overview showing the location of the mwa water mains running down fells way and then up vinton street and again the location of the break

▶ 28:42 Speaker 1: highlighted there you can go to the next slide please um and this is a photo of the intersection the roads were closed there was water all over and detours had to be put in place and mwra crews began isolating the main to shut down the break right away go to the next slide please and then so so we did receive low pressure and no water complaints from residents of melrose because of the amount of water that was leaving the main there was a reduction in pressure which affected many melrose residents when we were able to isolate the main those pressures resumed and people were able to get their water again and this is a picture right after we isolated we brought in a pipeline crew from our emdebury yard in chelsea to clean up the intersection and our our primary focus was to get the road open in time for morning commute traffic which we were successful in doing

▶ 29:45 Speaker 3: i'll take the next slide please and then the next morning we met out on the site

▶ 29:47 Speaker 1: to survey the damage to see what what the damage was done to the road to try to figure out what we needed to do to repair and what other utilities were impacted we um trying to think how to say

▶ 30:06 Speaker 1: we we reached out to a contractor rjv construction and were able to establish an emergency construction contract for them to come on the site to do the repairs and i'll talk a little bit i'll i will try to address your concerns um counselor through the chair about the causes of the break but then i will turn it over to ms barrett to talk about the actual construction activities and the and the cleanup efforts so you can go to the next slide please so this is a

▶ 30:45 Speaker 1: this is a schematic of the mwra service area in the vicinity it's part of the fells service area receives water from the gillis in the spot pond pump stations up to the fell storage tanks and

▶ 31:03 Speaker 1: then flows by gravity through our section 70 pipeline down the fells way and section 79 pipeline up to the wakefield border and at the time the excuse me at the day of the break we were supplying the area from gravity from the storage tank and at about two o'clock that afternoon we received a call from the wakefield water department that they had a large break at their pump station at the end of our section 79 pipeline and they were at the pump station they heard loud banging and then one of their pumps ruptured and they called us to assist in shutting the line down and they had damage to their facilities up there and then later that evening we had the break in our main one of the contributing factors we believe to the break in our main was the fact that the main when it was constructed was constructed through ledge section where they removed the the natural rock but then they threw the rock back into the into the um the trench and set the pipe on the rock which is a construction technique we wouldn't use today because if there's any movement in the pipe the the shards of rock can push against that cast iron pipe and potentially damage the pipe and we don't know for a fact that that's what occurred but when we excavated as you'll see later we did find evidence of the of the pipe sitting on ledge and one of the things we wanted to do was just correct that by making sure that the pipe was reinstalled using proper techniques that we would use today. We did review all of the hydraulic data that we have. We have pressure sensors in our system. We did not see any evidence of either pump operation or any of the work that our crew was doing. The area that's highlighted in red was out of service, and our crew was filling that line because we had done some maintenance work on that line and there was no evidence that any of the activities of the crew lined up with either of the two brakes nor any of the pump operations with either of the two brakes so we basically don't have conclusive evidence as to what caused the failure either of the failures however we did spring into action to repair and to make sure that the pipe was properly vetted so that if the ledge contributed to the failure it wouldn't contribute in the future so i think the next

▶ 33:46 Speaker 1: slide starts to talk construction i'll turn it over to ms barrett to talk about the repair

▶ 33:54 Speaker 2: activities thank you good evening everyone our first order of business was to get the road open and passable for the abutters so that they could get their cars out and get to work so we brought our JV in we met on site that the break occurred on Tuesday night we met on site at 730 on Wednesday morning and by 10 o'clock our JV had equipment on site and started doing the road repairs so you can see that they were just grading that that's an overview up near the railroad the slope of the tracks looking down that they just leveled the whole road so at least it was it was safely passable for the residents to get to their driveways next side so here we exposed our 20-inch water main it was an old cast-iron main and you as you can see the shards on the right of all the ledge and and also if you look closely on the right on the left photo on the right side you can see all that ledge that's still in place on the sides of the trench so we knew right way that we needed to to replace the pipe with proper bedding so that was the first order of business next slide please then we also looked at other utilities of the cities within within the roadway and so we televised the drains and the sewers and we noticed that the sewell had cracks in it so we replaced um 275 feet of six inch sewer and we installed new sewer manholes on vinton street as well so that is the um six inch sewer being installed next slide please that is the piece of pipe where the actual brake broke that is our mwra 20 inch main you can see the lateral crack so and on the left picture and then on the right you can see it laterally right around nine o'clock on the pipe so now we installed new we replaced the cast iron pipe with new 20-inch ductile ion pipe and obviously we excavated out the the ledge that was found within the trench we put in filter fabric and proper bedding and then we polywrapped the new pipe and installed so we installed about approximately 255 linear feet of new 20-inch water main of the mwras and we also installed a new 20-inch gate valve at the top of mitten street to isolate the line to be able to pressure test it and we did that so here is the new gate valve going in at the top of the street on the left side and on the right side we capped the new pipe to pressure test it next slide please so then we also worked on the city of melrose's 12-inch water main that ran up the street the 12-inch water main was very close in our trench at the top of the hill as we got near the bottom it widened the distance the separation distance increased a little so there was concern with the contractor when he was installing the 20-inch main that he he could possibly lose the city's 12-inch main and create a whole nother problem so what we did right away was install a temporary bypass so it was around 480 feet of temporary bypass that was installed and then that impacted the three homes on vinton street so we provided temporary water services to each one of those homes when we finished doing one other thing on the on the 12-inch cities when we finished doing those we replaced those homes the services with new services after we pressure tested and disinfected the city's water main so all told we replaced around 455 feet of the city's 12-inch main and then we installed three new 12-inch gate valves for the city as well and that was there was a gate valve at the bottom of the hill that had was problematic with an isolation and then we had to go back another valve and we had issues there so we replaced two valves at the bottom and then we also installed a new valve at the top of the hill same that we did with our line so that you could you could isolate and pressure test so then we moved on to the catch basins in the drainage system for the dcr so we installed two new catch basins on vinton street one a little bit further up on the railroad track side and then one right at the intersection as shown in the left photo there on the right photo what we also did we improved the dcis drainage system because we were told there was historically drainage problems at that intersection so we we ran an additional 12 linear feet of 10 inch pvc pipe from that new catch basin on the left out to the 15-inch drain in the middle of the lindfels parkway and so we installed a new drain manhole in the lindfels parkway and tied in that drainage

▶ 38:45 Speaker 2: system and then as we finished up then we milled and paved on vinton street this is again this is temporary pavement that we put down good practice is to allow the temporary pavement to settle before you put your permanent pavement on top and we discussed it with the dpw and the city had requested that we allow we normally do a minimum of 90 to 120 days but best practice is to allow it to settle over a winter and that's what was discussed with the city so the deal is that we will allow this temporary pavement to stay till next spring so that we'll get a full winter season of settlement and then next spring we'll come back and we'll do the permanent pavement and at that time we'll do pavement markings again as well so another thing we did was we installed when we did install the new 12-inch water main we installed a new hydrant for the city and so that there's 10 roughly 10 feet of new six inch pipe connecting that into the 12-inch main and then on the right we did the traffic loops and the next photo i think is just yeah the pavement markings so at the intersection and up into the street and um all the water that you can see running down the street is really just we had cracked a hydrant to just test the drainage to make sure that the drainage was was operating properly so and i'll take over from

▶ 40:11 Speaker 1: here so in in the process of shutting the line down an mwra isolation gate broke and so our crews were out in fellsway today digging to do a repair on that last remaining gate we're hopeful that this is the last thing we need to do to repair as much as we like to be and work in melrose we it is our intent to be finished working here and and not bothering you any longer so we're working to replace that gate valve and and then i believe the gas company is scheduled to be working in vinton street replacing their gas lines so that when we come back next year to do final paving for vinton street and out in the fells way and and re mark everything we're hopeful that we will have done everything and we will have improved the city's water lines we will have improved the the storm drain system for dcr we will have improved your sewer lines and hopefully left good quality pavement and markings behind and I believe that's it mr. chair if there are any questions we'd be happy to answer any questions councillors should speak of councillor Stewart councillor Thomas councillor German tizzy let me start off with council councillor stir thank you mr.

▶ 41:38 Robb Stewart: vice chair and thank you for being here tonight I appreciate it the one question that came to mind when you were speaking is are there other pipes on rock that we need to be

▶ 41:53 Speaker 1: concerned about so it's we don't I guess I'd say that many pipes have been constructed over the years in rock I mean we we're constructing pipes today that are in rock and you're working your way up a hill you tend to find the rock is high and that's why there's a hill there and so it's not so much that the pipe is in rock as it is the condition of the bedding that was used when the pipeline was constructed and so we so we don't know what the bedding looks like in all of those pipes so we have pipes all throughout the MW area service area and we probably have pipes in ledge all throughout the mw service area the pipes that we construct are not constructed with poor bedding we put good bedding in our predecessors design standards show and say that things are constructed in good bedding but obviously in this case there was a section where the bedding was poor um and um and it exhibited itself by the the pipeline breaking um so um i guess long story short we don't know for sure for certain um and um there's really no way to tell okay thank you

▶ 43:17 Cory Thomas: thank you mr counselor thomas thank you mr chairman uh welcome thank you very much hello director how are you um thank you for the presentation um every everything you showed us today and your response and everything that was done looks like it was done professionally and a wonderful job um i was actually on site i think i was the first one to call you um i was i was down at the baseball field next door um that's another story um is is a break further down the line like uh at the at the pump station the linden station in marlin is that usually a

▶ 43:52 Speaker 1: a precursor to a break further down the line so without knowing what the cause was of either of the breaks it's hard for us to know what the relationship is between the two whether something caused both or whether the response to the first caused the second it's really hard for us to know for sure the problem is is that we we don't have the data to analyze to be able to say it with any

▶ 44:18 Cory Thomas: certainty what the cause was and like i said the response was great and everything that you've done to date has been top-notch it looks great i drove on it the other day for the first time um i'm just kind of wondering if this was preventable uh you said that there was work being done on the fells way from tremont street up in up the fells way towards saugus um but work was not being done across vinton street was it no okay and then there's railroad track work going on right now as well it's been said there's been a number of heavy heavy machinery heavy equipment going over those roads is there any way to tell if that was a

▶ 44:52 Speaker 1: cause of this water main break I don't I can't imagine a scenario where it was I will admit that when we first arrived on this I mean I live right off Perkins Street although on the other side of the line in Stoneman I drive this intersection all the time like every day and I saw all the construction activity that was going on down there and my immediate thought was what did they do but there really is no indication that there was any relationship to the work that was being done on the railroad tracks to what occurred in our system

▶ 45:23 Cory Thomas: and is there you know is there any way you know when that when that break happened in Wakefield at the pump station in Linden there's no way of testing the system or flushing water through to see if the system is intact

▶ 45:40 Speaker 1: or it's vulnerable in any spot so so when their break occurred and we and they were able to shut the line down I guess we could have there there is a technique where you can do leak detection along the line and we actually did that after we isolated the second break to make sure that the Melrose lines weren't damaged just to make sure that there wasn't an active leak and we didn't have another potential catastrophic failure on I guess when the when the leak occurred or the break occurred at Wakefield system and we shut down we didn't arrange for that to happen and if we had arranged for it it would have been something we would have done in the overnight hours anyway because it's the kind of thing you do when it's quiet and the only time it's quiet is like when everybody goes to bed and there's no cars and there's no trains because you're actually using an acoustic technique to listen to the water spraying underground so I'm not sure even even had we arranged it which I wish I could say I thought of that and I arranged that I did not but even if we had we wouldn't have gotten there before 8 o'clock at night and it would have

▶ 46:52 Cory Thomas: happened anyway sure and then you said it was low pressure alarms that went off after the linen linen pump station break did any of them reach into Melrose or Or was it solely in Wakefield?

▶ 47:01 Speaker 1: No, it was on the second break. It was the break on the Vinton Street line that created the low pressure alarms.

▶ 47:09 Cory Thomas: Thank you very much for being here and answering my questions.

▶ 47:13 Speaker 1: Councilor Cervantesi? Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and I appreciate the response from the MWRA. Can I safely assume that the MWRA's has taken on full responsibility for the for the work project in other words when the city of melrose is not going to receive a bill for the cost of the fixes is it so the the work replacing the melrose mains that we the the mains that were replaced we agreed to pay for the cost of replacing the mains in melrose where they were coincident with the trench when we were excavating and replacing our own line so in other words the area where the rock excavation was and so we agreed to pay for for that replacement work we paid for the sewer line work and the drain work which was it turns out it's dcr strain anyway there are additional length of main that the city contracted with RJV to replace which in which increased the amount of footage of the total work that was done but we we replaced at our expense I want to say the 255 feet plus one of the valves that was necessary to get in isolation so that we could replace your main and we did your sewer work as well and the temporary water service work we did the paving is going to be us the curbing is us the the hydrant we paid for the hydrant or they paid for the hydrant we wouldn't pay for the hydrant okay we paying for the hydrant um et cetera so so the bulk of the work yes but there is some work that the that the city opted to do above and beyond um what we believed was necessary as a result of our break incidental while you're down there with the open up uh you know replace with up-to-date pipes i'm assuming the curb to curb final paving will be done by the mwra contractors yes correct right yeah if i could just jump in um so the city because rjv

▶ 49:26 Speaker 6: construction was out there doing the water main work um the city pursued uh an emergency procurement through the state and got approval to have rjv do the additional work um under a a contract with the city without going out to bid because it wouldn't have made any sense to to bring in another contractor what we found when we were

▶ 49:44 Speaker 6: trying to isolate that section of our main in order for the authority to to replace it was that there was one valve that needed to be replaced in order to isolate the main and the authority couldn't have done the work that was in the area of their trench without that so we asked them to pay for that because it

▶ 50:10 Speaker 6: was required for them to do the work when we were doing our shutdown after that we found there was another valve right in the intersection that was not part of this work that we couldn't get a good shutdown on so we asked our JV to do that separately and then we actually had them go a little further up the hill up Vinton Street beyond the MW areas work limits in order to replace some extra water main because we didn't want to be repaving the road and and not having our whole water main replaced in the whole area where the pavement will be so that's the additional we

▶ 50:46 Speaker 6: had sufficient funds in our operating budget to cover those costs so we didn't have to seek any free cash or any additional authorization it was all through our operating budget excellent you

▶ 50:58 John N. Tramontozzi: you know, logically made sense to do that. So, and again, thank you to the MWRA and the contractors in the city for your quick response to the whole situation, appreciate it, thank you.

▶ 51:11 Speaker 1: Thank you, Councillor McMaster.

▶ 51:12 Shawn M. MacMaster: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. Mr. Kobus, you mentioned that there was no indication that the work on the railroad contributed to this problem. As part of your fact finding in the aftermath of what happened, was there any type of investigation into what work was occurring the day in question. So the day of, earlier that day in particular, and the day before or days before.

▶ 51:38 Speaker 1: From the railroad contractor? No, we didn't spend a lot of time looking at what the railroad contractor was doing because the railroad contractor was not touching or operating our pipes or the town of Wakefield's pumps town of Wakefield's pumps or pipes, and it seems that whatever was occurring was some type of pressure situation within one of our two systems and not in any way related to construction activity in the vicinity. So we didn't spend a lot of time looking any further into it than that.

▶ 52:15 Shawn M. MacMaster: So considering that there was ledge that you found and there was rock underneath the pipe, Is it unreasonable to think that hammer drilling, if that was happening on or around the tracks, wouldn't necessarily create a situation where rock may create a vibration or friction on the pipes and result in the pipes being compromised?

▶ 52:45 Speaker 1: I guess if you look at the distance where the break occurred from where their abutment work is occurring the distances I mean we replaced 250 feet of pipe from where the break was down so 250 feet is kind of a long way like we we help me with you're the construction person help we we we very often if someone is doing blasting or some type of rock removal work in the vicinity of an MWRA water main, we will require them to put particle velocity detectors if they're within a certain number of peak particle velocity, sorry, within a certain distance of our pipeline. And that, the location of the break was well beyond where we would normally require that. And you would think if their work were to have created the situation that it would have occurred where our our section 70 pipeline passes right underneath the bridge continues on the fells way a mere you know feet away from from their work and you would have thought that that would have been the section that would have been impacted so i i don't i really don't believe that there's any um it's a good it's a good question but i don't believe that there's any relationship

▶ 54:09 Speaker 6: because of the distance I think one of their nuance that maybe isn't obvious to the council because you're not as familiar with the system is that the pipe that broke that pipe doesn't serve anything in Melrose at all that branches off the fells way up in the street and feeds Wakefield so this issue at the Wakefield pump station that occurred earlier that same day that line that it's only function I don't know where it goes beyond Wakefield but its function in Melrose is just to get to Wakefield and that pump station is one of the first things in Wakefield after it crosses the line so you know as an

▶ 54:47 Speaker 6: engineer seeing that that happened first and then that the break in Melrose cropped up later in that same day on that same branch you know there in my

▶ 55:01 Speaker 2: mind there's no way they're unrelated and and the the issue in Wakefield

▶ 55:03 Speaker 6: happened first so the chances that something local to the vinton street issue were the original cause

▶ 55:18 Shawn M. MacMaster: of the problem just doesn't it just doesn't add up it's a good point it sounds like the uh the source of the problem as you said miss paracas ellis was the pump station in wakefield that makes sense i think the you know the question is where they're confounding factors that may have contributed or intensified what happened and mr copus uh you had you had mentioned where the work uh was being done and if work if the if the break happened somewhere further away from where any work on the on the bridge was being done something that counselor thomas mentioned just comes to mind is i think many of us have heard from constituents about freight trains increased activity concerns about weight on the tracks and just whether or not at a certain point further away from perhaps where hammer drilling or something else was happening if that may have compromised the integrity of the pipe so that's just I think that's why we're asking these questions because there are you know certainly maybe what we're asking wouldn't be the cause but wondering whether or not it may have contributed to it you're falling on the sword here sir and I think that's admirable in terms of an agency but if If there's some culpability from the freight trains or from the railroad, I don't think the MWRA should be held responsible in terms of the questioning and footing the bill as you've come before us tonight to say that you've done, which we appreciate you. we appreciate you know what you what you have done to rectify the situation and uh the opportunity that it's presented through the department of uh public works to make some other needed uh improvements uh in the area so thank you for that thank you councilor master i have council

▶ 57:02 Speaker 1: Garipay in queue but we do have to start uh uh full council yeah um all my questions have been

▶ 57:12 Jack Eccles: answered if there are no other counselors wishing to speak what is the will of the committee at this

▶ 57:17 Speaker 6: time oh yeah am i able to make just one other comment um just in response to the public comment i didn't want to leave that unanswered the comment from the ped bike committee so we have dpw's gone out and measured the road the pavement that's down right now is temporary as mw i mentioned that's just the binder the road measures between 26 and 27 feet at the lower end and then it widens out up around the bend near the tracks and so we we think there's a good chance that we'll be able to fit a climbing bike lane on one side we did with the painting the temporary painting that's there right now we did try to shift the center line a little bit i don't know that it was shifted as drastically as what i had hoped at least it doesn't quite look like it when i've driven it but we should be able to fit have an 11 foot lane on the downhill end and a 15 foot lane on the uphill end which would allow for the the four feet adjacent to the curb to be a climbing bike lane when we do the final paving so it is our hope that we can accommodate that and finn is exactly right our complete streets policy requires us to consider complete streets elements every time we do a project whether it's an emergency repair or or just part of our paving program and we absolutely consider that every time thank you motion to place on file second