More improvements are being targeted for the Fredonia Water Treatment plant as well as portions of the system’s infrastructure.

A change order to include the two extra filter beds that the Chautauqua County Health Department required for the village during the recent boil-water mandate will cost an additional $55,093. That is for the expense for the labor, equipment and materials required to remove and replace the filter beds.

In addition to these changes, which were required, the project engineer would like to also include the replacement of the Vineyard Drive pump station as an emergency connection with the city of Dunkirk.

“The reason for that change is it would allow for varying the flow from the city of Dunkirk into the village and there’d be no change to the city of Dunkirk during that process,” said Mike Manning, O’Brien and Gere engineer at the Fredonia Village Board meeting on Monday.

“As these things were occurring the department of health brought to our attention that the boil water condition will help the village to procure emergency funding quicker rather than the village pay for these things out of pocket it opens up some doors to procure emergency funding to fund these items.”

Some other items the Health Department wanted put into this project included an upgrade to the site work at the water treatment plant, repairing the failing culverts and looking to protect two sets of pipes that are exposed at the moment. These items were scheduled to be included in a future project.

“So given the fact that there’s some emergency funding available and the department is ripe to get that funding,” Manning proposed. “We wanted to bring forth to the village the possibility of putting these components into this project under the emergency funding. These are required by the department of health and you would have their support to move these items forward under emergency funding.”

The total cost the village would be looking at acquiring for these upgrades would be just under $600,000. Trustee James Lyden’s concern grew out of the possible penalties associated with the contract with Kandey Co., the contractor out of West Seneca that is currently working on the water improvement project.

“Not completing the filter beds in a timely manner and then having an emergency” was an inconvenience to the village and its users, Lynden said.

He also wondered if the village should be receiveing compensation for the delays by the contractor. “Putting that contract off now, we’re being asked to delay it even further into the springtime without any penalties. I find that to be unjust dealings with this project. I think we should hold the contractor to the original agreement,” Lynden said.

“There’s no indication that we will or will not get funding due to the now ’emergency’ declaration. They’re now asking us to put some more contracts in their hands for further work that may or may not be completed in a timely manner. … I feel the village is due what they’re due. If they want to hold off and do the project later then they should pay the village the amount of penalties because they agreed to a contract.”

Mayor Doug Essek furthered the discussion by citing that the clarifiers that were to have been changed during the duration of the current contract that is quickly approaching its end date were delayed due to the pandemic.

“In order to replace a clarifier you have to have redundant water source and that would have been from and that will be from the Vineyard Drive pumping station, so that had to be in operation,” Essek said. “So when that was delayed our chief water operator made the decision that we can’t start that project because you have to tear down an entire wall to get that portion of the machinery out of the building and you can’t do that work in the wintertime so that created a delay there. That is the reason for the clarifiers not being done when they were supposed to and they need to be done later on.”

After more discussion the board chose to table the resolutions until a special meeting which will be on Oct. 26.