Groundbreaking for Largest Stimulus-Funded Water Project

(nat sound trucks – 190)
Huge construction trucks cleared the way for Seabrook’s new water treatment plant.
Currently, Seabrook residents depend on bedrock wells for their drinking water.
Seabrook Water Superintendent Curtis Slayton says the water received a minimal amount of treatment - using chlorine to disinfect and phosphate to capture some of the iron.
203 :30 what we’re building here is a system that has a pressure filter system, it’s called a green sand and what that will do is remove the iron, manganese, and arsenic through chemical treatment.
The plant will also treat radon in the water.
Since 2006, arsenic levels in the town’s water have been above federal drinking water standards.
During the groundbreaking, Department of Environmental Services Commissioner Tom Burack said the new 11-million dollar plant will make the drinking water safer for residents.
194 :50 “It will bring Seabrook into compliance with the recently lowered federal standard known as the national contaminate level for arsenic, a naturally occurring chemical with a myriad of health effects if exposure exceeds safe levels.”
Five million dollars of the project’s cost will come from federal stimulus dollars.
Half of that five million is a federal grant, the rest will be a low interest loan to Seabrook.
It’s the largest amount awarded to any drinking water project in the state.
The DES’s Rick Skarinka says the project easily met one of the requirements for the federal dollars.
It was shovel-ready.
191 2:05 “That, coupled with the compliance issue really propelled them up to the top of the funded portion of the list.”
Skarinka manages the drinking water revolving fund program at DES.
Through that program, federal stimulus dollars are paying for 56 projects across the state.
But so far, only about 25-percent of them are under contract and only one is complete.
Skarinka says they hope to have approval of loans for the remaining projects from the Governor and Executive Council this week.
Construction contracts would begin after that.
But he says they will meet a February 2010 deadline.
191 4:00 “as far as the delay goes, I look at it from we’re starting from 0 to 60 in a process that can normally take two to three years for some communities, so we have done extremely well in getting where we are now in construction projects.”
But the slow process means a longer wait for workers looking for jobs.
Bill Alger, a general contractor with the Kinsmen Corporation of Hooksett is helping build Seabrook’s new water treatment plant.
He estimates about 30 people will help build the plant.
Alger says the stimulus money is helping put people back to work, but for his company, the project won’t mean new jobs.
200 “4:53 we think it’s not going to be a long term thing, and so we’re not looking to just hire more people on just to bid jobs, we just work a lot more hours.”
But Daniel Milliken, with DP Milliken Construction says he’s hired six Seabrook residents because of the project.
And he thinks the stimulus money is helping his company and the town.
201 Absolutely, definitely I mean in today’s economy it’s a nice project for the town, and we’re a local contractor so it’s helped us out.
But the project would have been built without stimulus money.
Water Superintendent Curtis Slayton says the EPA required it.
“With the stimulus money that came in it just made it happen a little sooner and lessened the burden on the local taxpayer and water user”
Construction is scheduled to be completed by January 2011.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.