‘Freak occurance’ allows Utilities Building water breach

ALBANY — With social media serving up enhanced versions of goings-on in the community, Assistant City Manager Stephen Collier took pains Tuesday to offer a thorough explanation of the circumstances that have led to a plumbing overhaul at the city utilities headquarters at 401 Pine Ave.

“Let me say, first of all, that there is not, nor has there been, a large amount of raw sewage backing up into the Utilities Building,” Collier said. “There was a water leak that was the result of, really, a freak occurrence, and that water seeped into the basement level of the building.

“We moved our Tech (information technology) employees to our EOC building while we got the moisture out of that part of the building. Fortunately, it has a cement floor, so we were able to drain it quickly. Now, we’re waiting for the area to dry out.”

The flooding problem in the basement area of the 401 Pine Ave. building developed when plumbers, who were working on a more significant issue in the building, nicked a pipe that is part of an unused sprinkler system. Inexplicably, Collier said, the sprinkler system came on in the middle of the night before Central Plumbing Co. could fix the pipe.

“No one can explain why the sprinkler system decided to come on in the middle of the night,” the assistant city manager said. “It hasn’t been on since we’ve been in the building, and there was no reason that we know of for it to come on. But it did.

“The bad thing is, (Central Plumbing) was going to fix that pipe, but it wasn’t really a priority issue because we weren’t using the sprinkler system. When it came on, water filled a trench that had been dug for another issue we were working on, and it seeped into the basement. That was not sewage, though. The water was dirty only because it had run through the ground before getting into the basement.”

City staff and Central Plumbing had determined that the best way to fix a sewage backup problem that did exist in the building was to redesign its sewage system.

“For some reason, when they built this building, they designed it so that sewage from the upper floors would be taken to grinder pumps in the basement and then dumped into the sewer system,” Collier said. “That system had worked fine for years, but when we opened the utilities building and a lot of customers started using our restrooms, they started, basically, just flushing stuff down the toilets that didn’t need to be in there.

“There were hygiene products and plastic that got into the system, and that helped cause a back pressure issue. Since we can’t really monitor what the public is putting into the bathroom toilets, we decided it was best to redesign the sewage system in the building. Instead of sewage on the first and second floors going to the basement, it will now go directly into two or three cleanouts and then dump directly into the sewer system. That should handle the problem.”

Collier did not blame the plumbers for the water leakage into the basement area.

“Look, those guys feel terrible,” he said. “They’ve done a great job for us. This is just one of those things that happens. They were going to come in Saturday and fix the pipe in the sprinkler system, but there was no real emergency because, as I said, the sprinklers have not been used since we’ve been in the building.

“Of course, they’ve fixed the pipe now, and we’ve made sure the sprinkler system is not operational. This is just one of those unfortunate things that happens sometimes.”

Collier said he and other city officials are still assessing damages to determine the cost of the new sewage system and the damages from the water leak.

“We’re calculating costs now,” he said. “We had a couple of computer units that had electrical damage in the Tech department, and we’re looking at other costs. We expect the technology folks to be back into their offices later this week, after we get all the moisture out.

“Our IT folks are mobile enough to keep their operations going at alternate locations. Other than that, we’ve kept right on working.”

Collier said neither the building’s drive-thru nor its in-office services were impacted by the plumbing issues.

“Our customers never knew there was a problem,” he said. “The damage was only in the basement, and we contained it as quickly as possible. And our redesigned sewer system will take care of any other potential problems in the building.”

Jennifer Parks