City Launches Legal Action Over South Bay Wellfield

The City of Saint John is launching formal legal action over problems with the new South Bay Wellfield.

At the centre of the legal action are BGC Engineering, which helped build the well system, and two peer reviewers — Matt Alexander of Fundy Engineering Inc. and Kenneth Howard of the University of Toronto.

The city cancelled its contract with BGC in July, claiming there were lower-than-expected water levels in the wellfield.

The city launched a dispute resolution process against BGC Engineering, and later included Alexander and Howard in the process, in an effort to reach an out of court

“Although efforts were made to seek to resolve out of court the City’s claim against BGC and the two peer reviewers, events have arisen that make an early out of court resolution of the City’s claim unfeasible,” said the staff report presented to council this week.

“The City must commence formal legal proceedings now, to ensure that the statutory limitation period does not expire.”

According to a report, the wells currently sit a metre below sea level. They should be sitting at least a metre above sea level, otherwise, there is a risk for seawater to seep in.

Several west side neighbourhoods were diverted to the east side treatment facility to prevent any problems in the future.

Following a July 2019 council meeting, Mayor Don Darling blamed BGC Engineering for the issue.

“We hired an excellent engineering firm that we counted on that gave us bad advice, and that’s why we’ve hired a law firm to certainly attempt to recoup every dollar that taxpayers have invested in that bad advice,” said Darling.

“There was a study done over a period of a year that they completed that work and said there was enough water, that council used that information to make their decision and they were wrong.”

None of the claims have been proven in court.