I had a project in a midwestern city with a client that manufactured toasted snack cracker mixes. Anyway, over the years they had discharged too much fry oil in the process wastewater that was discharged into the city sewer. Eventually the sewer was plugged up a half mile away and the company was liable for cleanout costs.
The city saw this as a bonanza opportunity and slapped the company with several hundred thousand $$$ in costs. Company lawyers hired me to look at the cost detail and to design some new wastewater equipment for use in the plant. The costs the city billed came from two directions. Sampling the process wastewater and cleaning the sewer pipe.
The sampling used an auto sampler that hourly filled up a sample bottle and a flow meter with a data logger. Once a day, the samples were collected and sent to a laboratory. A number was read off the flow meter and recorded on a log sheet. So, the city calculated costs based on 1 worker, 1 helper, 1 supervisor, 2 vehicles 24/7 and rental for the sampling equipment. The people were drawing overtime as well for 16 hours of the day.
For the sewer line in plugging, I got cost quotes from some private companies. As you can guess, the cities claim of costs was wildly inflated for $$$ per hour of crew + equipment plus city employee feather bedding. It was fun blowing up the cities cost claim for the sampling piece of the work. The city was furnishing the equipment and their equipment didn't have traceable calibrations so was non-usable for compliance or legal use. It's right there I the state laws. Also, for about $50 a day, I could get the 1X daily sample collection and meter reading by a private lab tech that would have a legally valid chain of custody documentation.
On the legally valid thing, the city's lab was not certified so it had no legal standing plus cost 2-3 times more than a commercial lab I fed all this info to the silver tongued lawyer the company engaged and help him with strategy to make the city squirm. In the end, the city settled for about $50k versus the several hundred thousand the city claimed. About $20k each went to the lawyer and to my consulting company employer. For my piece of this, I also did some engineering design work. I also got a case of their snack crackers. Good stuff!
That’s funny. David vs Goliath! And, David won!
“The sampling used an auto sampler that hourly filled up a sample bottle and a flow meter with a data logger. Once a day, the samples were collected and sent to a laboratory. A number was read off the flow meter and recorded on a log sheet. So, the city calculated costs based on 1 worker, 1 helper, 1 supervisor, 2 vehicles 24/7 and rental for the sampling equipment. The people were drawing overtime as well for 16 hours of the day.”
The paragraph above almost sounds like the process for getting a simple building permit in my city. It’s a hair-pulling process. I understand why contractors are getting higher prices for permitted work...having to deal with the anal-retentives down at the permit office.