Brunswick County has rescinded its lawsuit against the contractor it hired to expand and upgrade the county’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant with a system capable of removing forever chemicals from drinking water.
The county announced Thursday that it had withdrawn its lawsuit on Aug. 25 against Oscar Renda Construction and surety Zurich American Insurance Co. and Federal Insurance Co., noting in a release “the County reserves the right to refile a lawsuit in the future.”
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The release did not include an explanation behind the county’s decision, one made a month after the county terminated its contract with the Oscar Renda and filed the suit citing breach of contract and repeated construction delays.
“The surety will be on-site over the coming weeks to identify the remaining project tasks as part of the new schedule development,” according to the release. “The surety has also hired a management group to provide additional oversight of the project.”
An update to the project schedule is expected to be provided to the county “in the next few weeks, which will be shared with the community as soon as possible.”
The original $167.3 million cost of the project is not expected to change, and there are no plans to increase water rates because of the project delays, according to the county.
The plant is being installed with a low-pressure reverse osmosis, or RO, system capable of removing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane, all of which are chemicals that are being discharged by upstream industrial polluters into the Cape Fear River, a major drinking water source in the region.
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Work also includes expanding the amount of water the plant can treat by an additional 12 million gallons per day. When the project is finished, the plant will have the capacity to treat more than 36 million gallons of water per day using RO.
County officials note that the county reserves the right to deduct liquidated damages because of the contractor’s delays.
“The delays do not mean that all work has stopped at the project site, but rather that key project milestones have not been met and that the overall project completion date has continued to move into the future,” the release states. “Brunswick County will continue to take all actions necessary to protect the best interests of our residents who have waited far too long for a solution to removing PFAS from our drinking water.”
