Plumbers flushing WWTA program over contracts

Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 6/3/15. Small business owners Gene Shipley and Kay Keefe speak to county commissioners about their concerns with WWTA on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 6/3/15. Small business owners Gene Shipley and Kay Keefe speak to county commissioners about their concerns with WWTA on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
photo Chris Clem, Esq. of law form Samples, Jennings, Ray & Clem, PLLC in Chattanooga, Tenn.

A group of plumbers feuding with the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority say they aren't doing any more WWTA business unless the body comes up with a better contract.

But the authority's attorney says if plumbers didn't sign contracts by Friday, the sewer board will just find a bigger company that will do the job.

The eight plumbers in the authority's Private Service Lateral Program have been seeking more pay and looser time restrictions for their work for months. They say the WWTA board ignored their requests, and in June they addressed the Hamilton County Commission in hopes of applying some political pressure.

But although the County Commission created the WWTA, it has no power over the sewer authority. So the eight must decide by today whether they will take the WWTA contract as written or go without the government gig.

WWTA Executive Director Cleveland Grimes could not be reached to say how many plumbers had signed by Friday evening. But Chris Clem, WWTA's attorney, says if the smaller plumbing companies don't renew, the authority will just find companies that will.

"Either you will need several small plumbers or a few large contractors," Clem said. "There are much larger contractors, in town and regionally, that we could package [the contract] and pitch it to them."

The program aims to replace old lateral lines in several areas of Hamilton County that have gravity sewers, including Signal Mountain, Red Bank, Lookout Mountain, Soddy-Daisy, East Ridge and parts of Ooltewah.

Lateral lines that are cracked or deteriorated allow excessive stormwater into the combined sewer system, which can cause backups and overflows of sewage into the Tennessee River.

Home and business owners are responsible for fixing or replacing leaking lateral lines - unless they sign over their pipes to WWTA's program, which will replace the laterals at no cost using federal grants for clean water improvements.

When the program started in 2009, there were 27 plumbers available to make repairs on a rotating basis. Now there are just eight.

Kay Keefe, owner of Keefe Plumbing & Heating Co., said she's not renewing.

"I'm not signing a new contract. I'm not going to obligate myself to a year's worth of work when I know I'm going to lose money," Keefe said.

The trouble is, Keefe said, the WWTA made a few changes to the contract that basically make the work impossible.

First, she said, a 13 percent increase in overall payments from the contract isn't the boost it looks like. She said the WWTA changed the scope of work for some items. For example, the pay to inspect laterals with a camera now isn't enough to cover the wage of an employee doing the job, Keefe said.

Also, she said, plumbers used to have four weeks to complete projects. That has been brought down to 10 days, which is effectively seven once you back three days out to check underground utilities, Keefe said.

And she's not alone.

Gene Shipley, owner of Shipley Plumbing Co., has been in the program since it started in 2009.

"I was in five years, and I never had a strike against me," he said. "And I'm not signing back up. I ain't in business to lose money."

Shipley said many jobs under the new contract don't cover materials or labor.

"Sometimes they want us to do a three-foot point work; it costs $350 to do the work and WWTA would only pay $100," he said.

Both Shipley and Keefe said getting paid at all was an issue. The WWTA pays plumbers once a month, but the two contractors said the checks often are for work long since completed.

"I'm still waiting to get paid from a bill I sent in on March 26," Shipley said.

In letters to the plumbers, Clem has denied the plumbers were not being paid in a timely manner. And on Thursday he said they just didn't know how professional government contracts work.

"It's common to only have a few bids on a [request for proposal]. That's just normal whether you are talking about electrical, plumbing or whatever," he said.

Answering complaints that the program has taken work away from area plumbers by taking ownership of the laterals and limiting which contractors can make the repairs, Clem said that was a necessary evil.

"This program that we are doing was not designed to take away a large amount of business from plumbers. I recognize that might have been a result," he said.

"But the fact is there is raw sewage overflowing into the Tennessee River and that had to stop."

Contact Louie Brogdon at lbrogdon@timesfreepress.com, @glbrogdoniv on Twitter or at 423-757-6481.

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