Water main break a real party pooper

Imagine planning an engagement party for your only daughter, with a full, elegant lawn party planned for more than 150 guests to celebrate the occasion. Waiters, waitresses, bartenders, a full menu, and more than 20 houseguests are ready to start the festivities.

And then the water turns off without warning.

It happened to Rita Carmody of Belknap Farm Drive on Saturday, Aug. 19. According to Rita, she’d been planning a party for her daughter Jaimie’s engagement to Joe Bogart for more than four months. She had a guest list of over 150 people and had spent well over $5,000 in preparation for the day’s event. Just as cooking and guest preparations were to start, the water stopped.

“Well, they broke a main. I had no water; it was a total disaster,” said Rita of the sewer and water extension project on Greenville Avenue, the source of the day’s problems.

The family had 22 houseguests from out of state at the home, who then had to be shuffled around to take showers at friends and family’s houses. Rita went to the work site on Greenville Avenue three times to speak with the site manager and, according to her account, was told several times the water would be back on in a couple of minutes.

“This was hours. I couldn’t finish cooking, my party was delayed two hours, it was a nightmare,” said Rita.

The Carmodys purchased the home off Greenville Avenue just over a year ago. She, along with other residents, have been inconvenienced with traffic delays, detours and more as part of the recent projects surrounding the Citizens Bank Campus construction.

“I’ve had it. The residents here are not getting anything out of this, and we are inconvenienced so badly every day. We don’t even know which way we should come home from work,” said Rita. “People on my street, we are just so over this. It was a Saturday. We work five days a week and hard and I planned for so many months. This is crazy. What they did to my party was just unacceptable.”

Rita said there were no showers available, no working toilets, and she had to send guests out to get bottled water to cook pasta for the event. She even went to the police station, which provided contact numbers for the Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC), which oversees the project, as well as Di Gregorio Corporation, the contractor working on the sewer and water project.

“If I would have known that this project was happening I would never have bought my home a year ago. This home was everything I wanted, except that the minute I moved in I got hit with torn up roads,” said Rita. “I had no idea that was going to happen; believe me, I would not have bought the house. Do I believe that buyers will now be knocking down the doors to live around here now? No, I don’t.”

Rita states that she’s already contacted an attorney and her councilperson and sent out a certified letter to the agent that deals with Di Gregorio. She also reached out to Jamie Samons, the public affairs manager with the Narragansett Bay Commission.

“Oh, my gosh, Rita Carmody, that poor woman,” said Samons when contacted about the issue. “She has all of our sympathies, and it’s a horrible thing to have happened.”

According to Samons, the water main break occurred when work crews were replacing the water line. Whenever crews have to dig under a water line, they typically dig by hand. While they were digging under a joint of the water line they were going to replace, they found that the line was completely rotted out and it disintegrated.

“This is the old asbestos line that’s being replaced. As a result, they had to shut off the water, and about 100 people lost water for about an hour and a half, and Ms. Carmody was one of them unfortunately,” said Samons.

The shutoff prevented a larger emergency and was under control after about two hours.

“Unfortunately, really unfortunately, it was apparently the day of her daughter’s engagement party and she had 150 people coming to her house, so to add that on top of existing frustration about the construction to begin with, anyone would understand that she would be absolutely incensed,” said Samons.

Samons told Rita that she could file a claim with Di Gregorio. While Samons can’t say with any certainty what will come of that claim, she advised Rita “that’s her best thing to do.”

“This is a pretty singular situation. We’ve never really run into anything like this before. We’ve certainly had issues on past construction projects where people have had their car damaged or something like that and those are generally handled pretty quickly, but this is a new and serious situation,” said Samons.

Samons added that she doesn’t believe Di Gregorio was in any way negligent or responsible for the rotted water pipe and resulting loss in water service that unfortunately affected Ms. Carmody’s party. Still, she does understand and sympathize with her frustration and anger.

Calls to Di Gregorio for comment on the matter were referred back to the NBC.

“It is a difficult job but an important one to the town of Johnston and the state of Rhode Island. Unfortunately, disruptions in service and inconveniences do occur in a project of this type and magnitude, especially when older or unstable infrastructure is involved,” said Samons. “The contractor and the entire team consisting of the town, Citizens, PWSB (the water supply board), RIDOT and the NBC are doing all they can to complete the project as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Rita’s party did eventually take place, albeit delayed, and good memories were made. While she hopes a similar situation doesn’t occur on her daughter’s wedding day, she does hope for some form of compensation for her damages claim.

“How do you put a number on the stress? Whatever they’re going to give me I’ll be happy because I put a lot of extra money into this,” said Rita. “I’m just so frustrated right now, I just want them to hurt like I did.”