One phase of the work, along State Road A1A just south of the Boynton Inlet, is nearing completion. Jerry Lower/ The Coastal Star
By John Pacenti
To steal a lyric, every plan is a prayer to Father Time. And that is no truer than when municipalities meticulously plan an infrastructure project only to discover what lies under the ground are surprises that derail, delay and defeat.
And thus is the case with Ocean Ridge’s replacement of its aging water pipes.
Town Manager Lynne Ladner told commissioners at their Oct. 7 meeting that issues were cropping up on Ocean Ridge’s southernmost island on Inlet Cay and River Drive as they connect to State Road A1A where work is already being done.
As the contractor installed the connection on the north side of River Drive at A1A, it was discovered that the steel piping that goes down River Drive is extremely corroded. “We’ve had a couple of different emergency breaks in the last couple of months due to the condition of these pipes,” Ladner said.
Complicating matters is that the fire hydrants on River Drive are barely meeting the required standard of 1,425 gallons per minute.
“But if anybody wants to do remodeling or one vacant lot on River decides to build, then it will be substandard because their minimum now for any new construction is 1,500 gallons per minute,” Ladner said.
And then came the rub. The town could save between $50,000 and $75,000 if the River Drive and Inlet Cay pipes were replaced now because the contractor for the A1A work has the needed drill bit on site.
But the cost of doing that road would come in at $695,000 and for the commission to do a change order of that magnitude — under the law — it needs to put the work out for bid again.
Mayor Geoff Pugh got frustrated after Vice Mayor Steve Coz and Commissioner Ainar Aijala Jr. started playing engineer — and even a resident joined in — and terms like “drill shot,” “drill bit thrower” and “pulling pipe” started being bandied about.
“I want to see a town engineer in front of us. OK, I want to see the research,” Pugh said.
And so it came to be that Town Engineer Lisa Tropepe appeared before the commission at a special meeting on Oct. 21. And she spoke the gospel from the book of municipal infrastructure.
“We thought it was going to be an extremely difficult project because of all the underground infrastructure, the lack of plans to show all of that underground infrastructure, and we really didn’t know every single connection to the residential properties on either side of the road,” she said of A1A.
Despite it all, Ocean Ridge is beating Murphy’s Law for the moment. The A1A project is ahead of schedule and under budget, she said.
Ladner and Tropepe proposed that the A1A project take on additional work on Inlet Cay Drive from A1A to River Drive. The steel pipe on the stretch is the same as the steel pipe on A1A. The addition to the current project would cost no more than $300,000 and would not have to go out for bid.
The commission approved the strategy, authorizing the town to negotiate with the current contractor.
It also approved for staff to commence design of the next phase of the project to address replacing the most corroded pipes in the town — such as on River Drive — for $925,000.
Commissioner Carolyn Cassidy said she is working with the town’s new lobbyist to try to get the Florida Legislature to appropriate some money to fix the town’s water pipe woes.
The Legislature has been open to helping coastal communities, many of which are replacing their pipes.
Tropepe told commissioners she had just returned from Italy and what she took away from an engineering standpoint was, “You better take care of your infrastructure, or else civilization is not going to survive.”
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