By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Local 375 is battling a plan for an outside consultant to monitor construction of the mammoth Water Tunnel No. 3. The Dept. of Environmental Protection is seeking a firm to take over construction management on part of the Manhattan section of the tunnel. Water Tunnel No. 3, a 60-mile long, 12- to 24-foot wide tube is needed to provide drinking water to the city’s 8 million residents, relieving stress on the two other tunnels, which are outdated and overburdened.

DEP claims it needs to farm out construction management to speed up construction of a 2.7-mile, 600-foot deep section in Manhattan. The city is eager to complete the project as it competes to host the 2012 Olympic Games.

In-house savings
“Our members have the experience and expertise to do the job,” said Claude Fort, president of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375. “By beefing up the in-house staff instead of contracting out construction management, DEP could accelerate the job while saving up to $12 million.”

“For more than a century, civil servants have effectively performed construction management for the city’s vast water supply system, so why should that be changed?” asked Vincent Moorehead, chair of the local’s Water Supply Chapter 13. “Many of our members have devoted their entire careers to this tunnel project. You can’t imagine what this misguided proposal is doing to morale.”

About 20 Local 375 members would be reassigned if the DEP contracting-out plan proceeds. Local 375 has proposed that DEP hire six tunnel inspectors immediately and an additional four next year to fully staff construction management at the tunnel. In recent years, attrition and reassignments have reduced the in-house staff.

In addition, Local 375 recommends that DEP transfer three inspectors and two resident engineers to the Manhattan site after completion of the Brooklyn-Queens work, which will end soon. “We are pleased that the DEP is considering the union proposal to allow our members to continue to perform the construction management work,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, who on July 20 accompanied Mr. Fort and a union team at a meeting with DEP Commissioner Christopher O. Ward. “Hopefully, we will be able to resolve this dispute though negotiations.”

Waste of taxpayer money
At the meeting, Ms. Roberts and Mr. Fort described the contracting-out plan as a waste of money and explained how in-house work is more cost effective. Since she became executive director in 2002, Ms. Roberts has campaigned against the city’s unnecessary spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants and its use of a “shadow government” of 100,000 consultants and temporary workers whose jobs could be more efficiently performed by civil servants.

At the Manhattan site, Local 375 members oversee the work of contractors who do blasting, excavation and other construction work. Their oversight of the construction work ensures that safety and environmental standards are met. “An outside firm is prone to be more concerned about its interest rather than the city’s interest,” said a Local 375 member who works at the site and asked not to be identified. “As civil servants, we want to protect the city’s interest.”