Suing The Sewer Guy

Manny Moutinho, president of Bridgeport-based Mark IV Construction, has been a political player in the city for 25 years. Federal investigators are looking into company work that began several years ago on behalf of Trumbull’s Water Pollution Control Authority. Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst announced today a lawsuit against the firm. From the CT Post:

TRUMBULL — The town is suing Bridgeport-based Mark IV Construction Company for more than $5 million, related to work done on a much-contested town sewer expansion project. The lawsuit comes a week after Herbst announced that Trumbull’s Water Pollution Control Authority was under a federal grand jury investigation.

The eight-count suit against Mark IV, filed Friday morning, alleges fraud, negligence, breach of contract and other offenses on the part of the company. The project affected roughly 730 homes in the town’s Jog Hill section.

During a press conference Friday, Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst said the suit was filed in the wake of several troubling findings about the project, revealed in a forensic audit conducted last year and in an engineering study done by the Shelton firm Tighe & Bond.

The Tighe & Bond report, also released at Friday’s conference, showed, among other things, an overpayment to the contractor or $463,584. It also revealed numerous physical defects within the sewer system that would cost about $4.7 million to repair. The defects included sunken streets in roughly 26 percent of the Jog Hill area.

Herbst said the lawsuit and the FBI investigation target work that took place before he took office. The lawsuit in particular, he said, is his administration’s attempt to rectify the problems caused by the construction project.

“We did not create this mess,” Herbst said. “We inherited this mess.”

The forensic audit, the results of which were released in September, found a variety of irregularities on the sewer expansion project, including a $3.5 million contract extension awarded to Mark IV in violation of the town charter. The Jog Hill project, which started in 2007, was originally estimated to cost about $15 million. By the time it was finished in 2009, it reportedly cost about $21 million.

The audit cost about $40,000 and was conducted by the Providence, R.I.-based firms CCR Certified Public Accountants and Business Advisors and the Beta Group. Herbst said Tighe & Bond was retained following the audit’s release to perform an analysis of construction on the project, and the associated costs incurred by Trumbull.

Trumbull isn’t the only town to have issues with Mark IV. For instance, in December 2008, the town of Milford terminated its contract with the company after a 1950s-era sewer main was found to be encased in cement. At the time, Milford officials said the company’s estimate to remove concrete from the pipe was too high.