The firm hired to design, engineer and construct a new dam at Ragged Mountain has been fired, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority announced Thursday.
Nearly a year ago, Gannett Fleming upped a cost estimate by tens of millions of dollars to build a higher dam at Ragged Mountain — a vital component of the area’s long-term water supply plan. Gannett Fleming far more than doubled an earlier $37 million estimate for the dam, blaming the hike on its discovery of fractured bedrock where the new dam is to be built, but RWSA officials questioned the massive spike.
The RWSA’s executive director, Thomas L. Frederick Jr., said Thursday that the authority would immediately begin searching for a new firm to advance the design of the proposed dam and come up with a new cost estimate. He expects a firm to be hired later this summer.
“We have significant respect for Gannett Fleming but decided that a new direction on design best serves the current discussions in this community,” RWSA Board of Directors Chairman Mike Gaffney said in a prepared statement.
The 50-year water supply plan for Charlottesville and Albemarle County was originally expected to cost $142.8 million and entails construction of a higher dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to increase water storage from 464 million to 2.19 billion gallons.
To fill the reservoir to its new capacity, a pipeline from the South Fork Reservoir is to be built.
Since Gannett Fleming said $37 million would actually cover only a fracture of the cost to build a higher dam at Ragged Mountain, RWSA officials have said they don’t know how much the water supply plan will end up costing.
A panel of experts was hired to evaluate the dam costs. Though the consultants didn’t provide a new cost estimate, they outlined how the RWSA could reduce costs for a new dam without compromising safety requirements.
Area governments had agreed last year that no work would be done on the dam’s construction until several studies re-examining costs were completed.
Gannett Fleming had already done a significant amount of work, including underground geotechnical investigations, according to Frederick, who says decisions will have to be made about how much additional data is needed and how that data would be interpreted when designing the dam’s foundation.
It could not be determined by press time Thursday how much money had been paid to Gannett Fleming or how much they were to be paid for their services.
However, RWSA Board of Directors member Judith Mueller said that the RWSA would not have to “buy out” Gannett Fleming in order to hire a different firm.
Critics of the approved water supply plan have used the increased cost estimate to try to rally public support for an alternative plan, in which the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir would be dredged, to increase water capacity — an idea many officials reject, because they say dredging wouldn’t supply enough water.
The RWSA hopes to have the new dam at Ragged Mountain built no later than early 2013.
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