Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant

NYC Dept. of Environmental Protection Puts a Colossal Task in Motion

by Amy S. Choi

The sewage of Manhattan will soon find a cleaner end.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection, in its efforts to bring the city's sewage treatment up to the standards required by the federal Clean Water Act, undertook a $493 million rehabilitation of the Newtown Creek Water Pollution Control Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The city has until December 2007 to ensure that the plant, which is the last of 14 in the city to be upgraded, will meet the federal standards.

The task is colossal. The five-phase project broke ground in August 2003 and currently is in the middle of its first phase on the central area of the site, which includes a 20-month rehabilitation of the four existing aeration and sedimentation tanks. The next four phases include the construction of four entirely new aeration and sedimentation tanks on the north end of the site and rehabilitating the eight tanks on the south end of the site.

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Each new tank is approximately the size of a new office building, measuring 310,000 sq. ft. and requiring more than 85,000 cu. yds. of concrete. The construction will expand the plant from 16 to 24 plants, add a new 40,000-sq.-ft. control building and increase treatment capacity by 50 percent.

The construction requires logistical expertise to match its enormity. During peak construction phases, there will be more than 400 and 600 people working at a time on the 53-acre site, and it must remain fully operational during the entire construction process. The plant treats Manhattan's sewage from south of Canal Street and east of Park Avenue - approximately 310 million gallons a day.

Ultimately, Newtown Creek will process all of the wastewater that comes out of the commercial and residential redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.

"We have seven different operations running concurrently and have more than 200 men on the job right now, which doesn't include any of our subcontractors," said Ali M. Catik, project executive for Slattery Skanska of Whitestone, N.Y., a major joint venture partner of the general contracting team. "We are planning on further opening the job and are trying to work on a few other areas that are coming available to us now."

Slattery Skanska, in a joint venture with Peekskill, N.Y.-based Picone/McCullagh and Perini Corp., serves as the general contractor on the job. The joint venture is working with the construction management joint venture of New York-based Hazen and Sawyer, PC, and White Plains, N.Y.-based Malcolm Pirnie Inc., and the design consultant joint venture between Hazen and Sawyer, Malcolm Pirnie, and Greeley and Hansen LLP from Chicago.

These three teams, in recognition of the scope of the project and its tight schedule, formed a unique partnership with the DEP in order to make decision-making as efficient as possible.

The entities hired Raleigh, N.C.-based FMI Corp., a firm that offers management to construction companies, to facilitate bimonthly conversations between the construction teams and DEP executives to discuss the particulars of Newtown Creek on an ongoing basis.

"It helps us to understand different constraints and to find creative ways of getting ahead of the schedule and how we can solve different problems," Catik said. "It helps us make decisions as rapidly as possible to keep construction moving but also helps resolve issues as they come up and keeps everybody involved."

For example, the design consultants have placed an entire team of people onsite to review drawings and give the contractors and construction managers immediate answers to their questions. Critical decisions about access to the supportive excavation work and the staging area were made quickly as a result of this partnering scheme.

The efficiency of the construction process is always an overriding concern. In order to minimize inefficiencies, the general contractors are self-performing approximately 70 percent of the construction.

Another concern is scheduling. Because the site has access and staging constraints, and the general contractors are renting offsite staging areas, a limited amount of material and equipment can be delivered and/or utilized at any given time.

The project team also has to carefully handle the materials that are being removed, all of which are contaminated. The plant is on a former Mobile/Exxon tank farm, so all of the soil is shipped out of state for treatment, while the disposable water has to be treated and constantly monitored during construction for contaminants. The air on the site is also monitored regularly.

"With the size and scope of the project, the really important thing to understand is the fact that we are on a very tight schedule and we are all aware of it," Catik said. "We're looking for ways to open up as many avenues of work as possible and work with the partnership toward that end."