The Poop Left Out of the Loop

Willard’s Failing Force Main

The article I’d planned for this morning on the effort by some residents to initiate a state audit of the City of Willard—an effort that crystallized in the wake of former alderman Corey Hendrickson’s embezzlement of his former employer during five of the six years he spent as Willard’s mayor—wasn’t yet meant to be.

While you’re waiting, I’ll give you something else to chew on that I’ve been following for the past year or so but haven’t taken the time to write about:

Willard’s failing force main—the pipeline that carries sewage from the City of Willard to the City of Springfield—and that was installed circa 2018.

The Plaintiff

In a lawsuit filed in November 2021, the City alleges that, among other things, the contractor who performed the work over-inserted each section of pipe into the next section of pipe (known as over belling), causing the pipeline to fail around 10-12 times during the past several years. The City is suing the contractor, Hamilton & Dad, Inc., Hamilton’s insurance company, West Bend Mutual Insurance, and the engineering firm, White River Engineering.

Back in December, I visited the courthouse and obtained a copy of the suit. At that time, if I remember correctly (I’ve since thrown the paperwork away, as I thought I was done writing about Willard), the City was asking for relief initially in the amount of $750,000 with even more compensation (considerably more, from the way it sounded) being expected for ongoing damages.

From the lawsuit:

“The result of these breaks was environmentally destructive and extremely costly to Willard. The breaks have dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the environment, required emergency response from Willard's employees, and resulted in the Force Main not being fit for its intended purpose.”

The suit continues:

“The subject Force Main is also in such a state that it is unusable, and Willard will be forced to build a new Force Main to replace [it]…”

If you’ve seen digging or extensive excavation, you may have witnessed the Public Works crew hard at work getting the pipeline back under control. At one point, Willard’s sewage even had to be trucked to Springfield.

View the City’s suit here, or at least the iteration that was on the court docket in July.

The Counterclaims

The counterclaims of one of the defendants, West Bend Mutual Insurance, allege, among other things, that the City of Willard:

“…had or should have had an inspector at the site of the installation; if the pipe was over belled or otherwise wrongly installed, Plaintiff should have known and informed Hamilton prior to Hamilton finishing the job, but did not;

Plaintiff failed to have adequate presence during construction to inspect and observe the work and to monitor the work…”

And that:

Plaintiff failed to perform all necessary maintenance on the improvements[.]

View the defendants’ counterclaims here and here.

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, and I take no position on the validity of any of the alleged claims or counterclaims. If you feel you’ve reached this article in error, please hang up and try again.