Constantine acts to remove contractor from finishing stalled part of Brightwater tunnel

It took a King County contractor nearly nine months to get a damaged tunneling machine back into operation on the Brightwater sewage-treatment project.

Now County Executive Dow Constantine says he's run out of patience and doesn't want to give the contractor more time to fix a second machine, stuck since last June more than 300 feet below Lake Forest Park.

Constantine said Thursday that continuing problems could delay completion of the $1.8 billion sewage project until December 2013 — three years behind schedule. His solution is to replace the contractor on a portion of the project with another whose tunnel segment is almost complete and has a boring machine available.

"This is an unacceptable delay," Constantine said of the tunneling problems in a letter to Metropolitan King County Council Chairman Bob Ferguson.

Constantine wrote that it is "imperative" to turn two miles of boring over to another contractor, who has completed about four miles of the 13-mile pipeline tunnel that will carry treated water from the Brightwater treatment plant north of Woodinville to an outfall in Puget Sound.

The operator of the damaged machines, Vinci/Parsons RCI/Frontier-Kemper, told the county it would cost an additional $98 million to finish the western half of its job. Officials estimate that the other contractor, Jay Dee/Coluccio/Taisei, could do the work faster, and for about $50 million to $60 million.

Shane Yanagisawa, deputy project manager for the Vinci group, declined to comment, saying the contract requires him to refer questions to the county.

Wastewater Treatment Director Christie True said switching contractors is expected to result in completion of the Brightwater project by the summer of 2012.

"We need this facility to make sure that we can protect public health and not have sanitary sewer overflows," True said. "We really have to do everything we can to get the project done on time to meet our service requirements."

Finishing sooner will also reduce costs, True said.

Under Constantine's proposal, the Vinci group would complete the Kenmore-to-Bothell portion of its tunnel contract, while Jay Dee and partners would finish the stretch between Ballinger Way and Kenmore. Jay Dee would use a boring machine that has tunneled from Point Wells to Shoreline.

Vinci got one of Bothell-bound machine up and running this week.

True said she doesn't know how much the delays will affect the cost of the project. King County and the Vinci group are disputing who is responsible for overruns above the contractor's $213 million contract.

The Jay Dee group's original contract was worth $102 million. A price will be negotiated for its additional work.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com