City officials guaranteed an active response after a sewer contractor reportedly disobeyed several conditions.

“We will get this situation taken care of,” Interim City Manager Charlie Cassens said. “We’re going to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they do (follow the contract).”

Cassens, Interim Public Works Director Mark Clark and City Councilman Dean Barlow attended a neighborhood meeting after residents complained of dust and noise violations in their area at a recent council meeting. Cassens also read a notice from AMEC, the parent company of SJ Louis Construction, the construction crew that has set up operations in their area to continue work on the Neptune Sewer Staging Area. Cassens said the majority of operation would desist on the property at the end of the month or by mid-December.

“To me, the dust issue that they are describing is excessive and needs to be stopped,” Cassens said. “If we force them to move their operations, it’s only going to make costs huge, cause a delay and effect more people in the neighborhood.”

Residents insisted the problems were more severe than previous work done in the city. Bill Anderson said he would often see dust clouds outside of his windows.

“You couldn’t open up the door without getting a face full of dust,” he said. “Some days you couldn’t see across the street. Our new filters look like you dumped a shovel of dirt on them. … We have children, and we’re afraid to even go outside.”

Anderson said the dust has cleared in the past few days as word has spread about the problem.

“It’s like night and day,” he said. “We’re happy something is happening now, but someone needs to keep an eye on it.”

The problem is severe enough to warrant serious attention from the city, Cassens said.

“I know I wouldn’t want this in my backyard. We need to sit on them as far as dust control, and I can assure you the dust issue won’t be a problem,” he told the residents. “You have my word that this will be looked at.”

Cassens said the situation will also serve as a warning to future projects and promised city staff would more closely monitor that contracts are being followed.

“If we had to do this over again, we wouldn’t have done it this way,” Cassens said. “One benefit of this is that we will know how to handle similar situations in the future, and we are apologetic that this happened. Trust me, (the construction group) will hear from us on this and it won’t happen again.”

Host Laurelea Kim said she was happy city staff addressed her concerns but remained unsure about the project.

“The (construction crew) never met the conditions before,” she said, “so why should we believe them now?”

Kim later said she was thankful the city responded.

“We’re thankful they came out, and we’ll see if it’s followed,” she said. “But I’m glad someone is finally doing something about this.”

Neighbor Leroy Winsor agreed.

“It took quite a while for someone to listen to us,” he said. “But I think they followed up on this quite well.”

Clark said the city would look into the problems and said the item should appear on the Dec. 8 council meeting.

“We’re going to emphasize to the contractor that he’s on a very short leash,” Clark said. “We’ve had projects in residential areas like this before, but this is definitely the most severe problems we’ve heard of.”

You can contact the reporter at nbruttell@havasunews.com.