Pete Nelson, photographed with his wife Ethel by my colleague Kyndell Harkness, reported a stream of driveby gawkers on Smithtown Terrace after my Sunday story about his efforts to get the Metropolitan Council to pay for fixing damage to his property from a $7 million sewer project. A day later, Met Council staff faced some skeptical questions from the Victoria City Council, which is scheduled to vote July 13 on allowing the project’s next phase. That involves digging a tunnel 100 feet underground to accommodate a 6-foot-diameter sewer to serve the Victoria, Waconia and St. Bonifacius area.

Kim Roden is the council member who has been most publicly critical about the Met Council’s behavior toward property owners with gripes about its sewer project.

“I don’t want to stop them. I want to see the project go forward,” Roden told me earlier this week. “I need to know what’s going to change so we don’t have a mess… [At Monday’s meeting] I told these guys, you may think of me from the council woman from hell, but I got to tell you something, you guys have just totally messed this up.”

Bonnie Kollodge, a Met Council spokeswoman, told me in an email that the Met Council Environmental Services “is refining its proposed written procedure pertaining to construction related concerns and claims. Staff plan to discuss with Victoria staff prior to transmitting a proposed procedure to the City Council as part of amending our cooperative agreement.”

Here’s the Met Council’s written policy toward damage claims from the next phase of the big sewer dig:

Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES)
Victoria Sewer Tunneling Project

What should I do if I believe my property has been damaged from MCES’s sewer construction?
• Call MCES’s Construction Contract Administrator for this project, Tom Buchal, at 651-602-4026 (office) or 651-325-6369 (cell).
• The MCES Construction Contract Administrator will notify our Contractor of the damage in writing and will give you a copy of the notification. You may also be asked to prepare a written damage claim to the contractor.
• The construction contract between MCES and the Contractor holds the Contractor responsible for damage to private property that is caused by its actions or its subcontractor’s actions.
• The Contractor is required to repair damage it has caused to pre-existing or better condition. The Contractor is required by the construction contract to provide insurance to cover property damage claims.

What should I do if the Contractor or its insurance company denies my damage claim?
• Call MCES’s Construction Contract Administrator for this project, Tom Buchal, at 651-602-4026 (office) or 651-325-6369 (cell).
• You can request that MCES do an inspection of the damage. MCES will compare the pre-construction condition to the current condition.
• If MCES determines that the Contractor has damaged your property, the Council can order the Contractor to repair the damage.

• You also have the option of filing a damage claim through your homeowner’s insurance.
• The homeowner’s insurance claim process would be done without involvement from MCES.

Roden said she will continue to be a thorn in the Met Council’s side until she sees hard evidence that the regional government has changed its ways. “Convince me this is not going to blow up in our face,” she said.

Whistleblower will keep an eye on the Met Council’s Big Dig to see how it goes.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 10:41 am and is filed under Aging infrastructure, Government spends your money, Property problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.