Dillsburg firm among those paying nearly $3M to settle suit over landfill tank liner - PennLive

Dillsburg firm among those paying nearly $3M to settle suit over landfill tank liner - pennlive.com

WILLIAMSPORT — Lycoming County will receive $2.9 million in an out-of-court settlement over a liner issue with a storage tank at its landfill for which a York County firm was the general contractor.

The settlement approved Thursday by the county commissioners resolves the lengthy legal action over the high-density polyethylene double liner in the 5.5-million-gallon concrete leachate tank.

Lobar Inc. of Dillsburg began work on the contract in 2012 and finished the concrete part a year later. A subcontractor, Golder Associates Inc., completed the liner in 2014.

Cummings & Smith Inc., the landfill engineers, following tests in April 2014 concluded the tank wall and floor liner passed the hydrostatic test requirements of the contract.

However, the state Department of Environmental Protection did not consider the tank liner testing to be valid.

That resulted in the engineers requiring Lobar and find and correct the supposedly defective liner system which it and Golder did.

In January 2016 Lobar submitted a $695,147 change order for the extra work which the county commissioners rejected.

Lobar in 2017 sued the county and Cummings & Smith in county court claiming the tank liner design was faulty. The county contended Lobar had not questioned the design until May 2016.

The county then sued the engineers and Federal Insurance Co. Inc. of Wayne, N.J., which provided Lobar’s performance bond, to recover its costs for investigating and remediating the liner problem. The two cases were consolidated.

Lobar brought Golder into the litigation but later dismissed its claims against the Canadian company as part of a cooperation agreement.

Under the terms of the settlement, reached through mediation without admission of liability, Lobar will pay $1.15 million, Cummings & Smith, $1.01 million and Golder, $750,000.

Cummings and Golder are to make full payment within 30 days the settlement is fully executed. Lobar is to pay $750,000 in that time period and the rest by Jan. 15.

Since the county needed the tank to get approval to expand the landfill, it awarded a $1.28 million contract to Envirocon Systems Inc. of Houston, Texas, to install the new liner.

An application for a permit to use the tank with the new liner is under review by DEP.

Leachate, which is water contaminated by passing through garbage, is pumped from the landfill to two sewage treatment plants.

Two lagoons currently are used for storage when the amount of leachate exceeds what the treatment plants can accept.