A New Jersey contractor is demanding $13 million from Orange and Rockland Utilities Inc. for allegedly blocking completion of a sewer project.
Metra Industries Inc. of Little Falls accused the electric and gas utility of fraud, defamation and tortious interference, in a complaint filed June 11 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
The utility caused “massive delays and cost overruns,” Metra claims, “due to O&R”™s failure to ”¦ relocate its gas mains.”
The Rockland County Sewer District awarded Metra a $14.7 million contract in 2014 to extend a sewer line three miles from a wastewater treatment plant in Hillburn to homes in Sloatsburg.
Time was of the essence, according to the Route 17 Project specifications. The job had to be completed in 365 days.
Parts of the sewer line had to be installed under 15 to 25 feet of ledge rock in a public right-of-way that O&R used for gas lines. Rock had to be blasted and removed.
Plans allowed for low peak particle velocity explosions ”“ a measure of movement or vibration within the ground ”“ so as to prevent damage to existing pipes.
The contract also allowed for the possibility of moving the gas lines, the lawsuit states, and New York law requires utilities to relocate pipes at their own expense when required for public health and safety or convenience.
Metra states it had installed about 74% of the pipes by February 2016, all in places with little rock. But when it came time to break rock, the project ground to a near standstill.
Metra claims it was not possible to break the rock with low velocity blasts, and O&R refused to move its gas lines.
O&R had previously allowed contractors on other projects to use greater explosions, according to the lawsuit, but the utility would not allow higher velocity blasts for the Route 17 Project.
Metra hired Blasting Analysis International to evaluate whether greater blasts posed risks to the gas lines.
BAI reported that it had never seen an instance where blasting levels at more than twice the velocity specified for the Route 17 Project had damaged buried gas lines, Metra said.
“The job will come to and remain at a standstill,” BAI stated in an expert opinion, “because it is not buildable as designed under the current restrictions.”
O&R allegedly dictated exactly how Metra should blast the rock, the complaint states, and that plan failed.
Then Metra tried to break the rock with an enormous hydraulic jackhammer mounted on a backhoe. The contractor installed as little as one section of pipe in five days “of banging, chipping and hammering away at the ledge rock.” The point of the jackhammer melted and the excavation equipment was degraded, according to the lawsuit.
The Rockland sewer district replaced Metra with Kubricky Construction Corp. in October 2019. More than 99% of the sewer pipe had been installed, leaving 126 feet to the finish line.
As of June 11, six years after work began and nine months after Kubricky broke ground, the project has not been completed, the complaint states, “illustrating the magnitude of the conflict” with O&R.
Metra also alleges that O&R threatened to initiate emergency evacuation procedures if blasting continued, falsely accused the contractor of damaging the gas lines and filed fraudulent insurance claims for nonexistent damage to its gas lines.
“O&R”™s bogus damage claims and threats to evacuate the public reflect such wanton dishonesty,” the complaint states, “as to imply a complete indifference to O&R”™s civic obligations.”
Consolidated Edison of New York, O&R”™s parent company, did not immediately respond to a request for its side of the story.
Metra is represented by Pelham attorney Peter M. Kutil and Virginia attorney C. William Groscup.
