The city and its water utility are at a stalemate over who should take on the liabilities and associated costs for a downtown project that’s already been delayed more than a decade and now will be left only partially complete so the street can be closed up ahead of the Final Four in April.
Repaving the street will leave in place century-old water and sewer mains that the city has been trying to replace since 2012. Instead, it will patch the sewer line and leave the water main untouched.
If either fails, millions of gallons of water could spill out and pressure could be lost, even putting the city’s water supply at risk.
Over the last week, finger-pointing between the city and the San Antonio Water System has expanded to include the city’s contractor, Sundt Construction, which says SAWS or its subcontractor, HDR Engineering, failed to do sufficient pre-construction work on the project. SAWS says Sundt was responsible for that work.
SAWS’ board of trustees learned last Tuesday that the original replacement project has basically been abandoned so that the street can be closed in time for tens of thousand of visitors to descend on the Alamodome.
Trustees balked over the city’s request that SAWS sign a memorandum of understanding agreeing to pay half the street repair costs if the mains break in the next decade.
What went wrong?
The replacement of the mains was originally part of the city’s 2012 bond program. VIA’s hopes to run street cars along South Alamo first delayed the project, although those plans never came to fruition. The main replacement was then pushed to the 2017 bond program, delayed again by both the pandemic and construction at Hemisfair’s Civic Park, city officials said.
When work finally started in 2021, the project’s price tag was estimated at $36.6 million. No one can say at this point what the final cost will be.
City officials told the San Antonio Report on Monday that SAWS’ failure to properly identify where its underground chilled water lines are on South Alamo Street “contributed significantly to the project’s delays.”
SAWS refuted that charge by pointing to pre-construction documents that the utility says show “the contractor,” or Sundt, was responsible for this investigative work.
When Sundt crews started construction in December 2021 — a month after being selected for the project — they hit existing chilled water lines in the spot they where they were going in to add more, Sundt’s senior vice president and corporate strategic business officer John Carlson said.
“That shows me someone didn’t do their job during the design phase,” Carlson said, adding that Sundt was not hired as the designer in this case, just as the builder. “Everything snowballed from that.”
Who’s responsible?
Along with the city’s prolonged renovations of the St. Mary’s Strip, the Broadway Corridor and Zona Cultural, the South Alamo Street project delays have just added to downtown construction headaches. Those frustrations have recently pushed small business owners to get more involved in upcoming city elections in an effort to hold the city accountable.
In response to constituents’ complaints, Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) filed a council request earlier this summer to revise the city’s construction process. Namely, it asks that the city states ahead of a project which party is responsible for identifying the existing underground infrastructure.
That request is set to go before the council’s governance committee Friday.
In older parts of downtown, maps showing where the city’s utility lines lie are often outdated — meaning pre-construction work includes verifying where they actually are, said Assistant City Manager John Peterek.
This can sometimes involve a process called “potholing,” or the drilling of exploratory holes to properly locate underground utilities. The city and Sundt allege SAWS or its design subcontractor, HDR Engineering, didn’t do enough of this type of investigative work prior to the first day of construction, meaning the designs the contractor was using were incorrect.
“SAWS owns all water and wastewater lines in San Antonio, and it is their responsibility to identify and manage their part of any capital improvement project involving utilities,” Peterek told the San Antonio Report. “On South Alamo, SAWS did not accurately locate their chilled water lines during the project’s design.”
SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente on Tuesday pointed to language in the pre-construction bid that “the contractor shall verify the exact location of underground utilities … 1-2 weeks prior to construction whether shown on plans or not.” He says this shows that the responsibility lies with Sundt.
Puente did acknowledge that the utility’s subcontractor HDR Engineering “had some deficiencies in their design,” and so is “partially responsible” — though less so than the primary contractor, Sundt.
On Wednesday, Carlson said those sections of the bid documents are simply referring to Sundt’s responsibility to call the state’s “Call Before You Dig” service and get the above ground infrastructure paint marked, which he said Sundt did. Carlson reiterated that the “designer” — whether SAWS or HDR Engineering in this case — is the party responsible for the pre-construction investigative underground work under the law.
SAWS chief operating officer Andrea Beymer acknowledged that there probably should be clearer guidelines for all parties on joint construction work moving forward. “As we look at certain projects, particularly in the downtown area, identifying those that we need to do more subsurface investigation work” will be important, she said.
Regardless of who’s at fault, Puente told the San Antonio Report that SAWS is now working with HDR Engineering, as well as the city, to find a way forward.
It’s unclear if Kaur’s council request will be sufficient to avoid this type of confusion in the future. She told the San Antonio Report Tuesday that the city needs more clarity about the roles and responsibilities each entity takes on within these long, complicated projects. Doing so could help prevent delays that have bedeviled residents and small businesses alike, Kaur said.
For now, construction on the South Alamo project continues in order to meet a deadline imposed by a basketball tournament, with additional costs to the taxpayer remaining unclear.
The Final Four could generate an economic impact of as much as $220 million, say boosters.
Reporter Tracy Idell Hamilton contributed to this report.
