An APTIM-North Wind joint venture that ran into bad luck and bedrock while building the Outfall 200 Mercury Treatment Facility at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee may have its contract extended beyond the current Dec. 5 expiration, a Department of Energy spokesperson said recently.
“The Mercury Treatment Facility is scheduled to be operational in 2025,” a DOE spokesperson said last week in response to an inquiry from Weapons Complex Monitor. “APTIM North Wind is steadily making progress on construction; however, the facility will not be finished in December 2022, so we anticipate their contract will be extended.”
In March, DOE said the project — designed to remove mercury that contaminated local waters during Cold War nuclear-weapons production — was about 40% complete.
“APTIM-NW has overcome some of the early problems encountered on the Mercury Treatment Facility project, but they are still encountering challenges as they work to complete excavation of the headworks site, particularly in the area of water management,” the spokesperson said in a followup email Wednesday. “Fortunately, site conditions are more stable at the treatment facility site and crews there are making progress.”
In May, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned of schedule delays resulting from factors such as bedrock encountered at the construction site and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The joint venture “encountered bedrock and soils problems during construction of the foundations of the project’s two main buildings,” the GAO said in the report that looked at several major infrastructure projects in the DOE weapons complex. APTIM-North Wind hoped to start construction in late 2018, soon after the initial four-year contract was awarded by DOE, but problems arose.
Bosses at the DOE Office of Environmental Management reported to GAO the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other outside contractors were brought on to provide “needed technical expertise,” to deal with the problems, according to the report. The Office of Environmental Management has said it does not expect big cost overruns because under the firm fixed-price contract, much of the extra expense will be borne by APTIM-North Wind.
Large amounts of mercury entered the environment around Oak Ridge during the Cold War nuclear weapons work at the Y- 12 National Security Complex, according to DOE.
The project being built under the APTIM-North Wind contract, currently valued at $112 million, consists of a headworks facility and the treatment plant. “The headworks facility plans to capture creek flow on the west end of Y-12, store excess stormwater, remove grit from the water, and pump it through a pipeline to the treatment plant on the east side of Y-12,” according to GAO. The treated water is then to flow into the East Fork Poplar Creek.
