WPCNR MAIN STREET JOURNAL. By John F. Bailey. August 12, 2004: Cappelli Enterpises announced to WPCNR Thursday that the firm will begin relining the Main Street sewer line in little more than two weeks. Bruce Berg, Vice President of Cappelli Enterprises said the firm is contracting with a private company within the next week to reline the sewer at Mr. Cappelli's expense as agreed with the Department of Public Works. Berg said Cappelli Enterprises decided to hire their own firm rather than pay the city to execute the relining. He said work on the relining should begin very soon.

LOUIS CAPPELLI, The Super Developer Addressing the Common Council June 7, 2004 at approval of his 221 Main Street Cappelli Hotel-Condoplex. Photo by WPCNR News.

A sewer engineer told WPCNR the relining process, that consists of applying a plastic coating on the interior of the sewer pipe, has been found to improve sewer flow so much that it decreases the level of the sewer pipe by as much as 50%. He said that it prevents seepage from cracks in the sewer line, eliminates coagulations of grease and other sluggish contents that tend to slow the flow.

Louis Cappelli was very confident in the process in his appearance on White Plains Week on December 3, 2003, he explained the compromise he and the city had worked out to make sure the Main Street Sewer could handle the effluent from the City Center:

"The Department of Public Works came up with a very creative and ingenious idea that the pipe capacity could be increased substantially by lining the pipe, in effect making it smoother, and that cost of lining that pipe which is in very good shape, but could be lined is significantly less than in rebuilding the sewer because you don't have to dig in the ground," Cappelli said.

On that show, Cappelli explained the process: "You do it from inside. You actually get inside the pipe with special equipment, go down the pipe and you line it. It's much cheaper."

The Nicoletti RedLine and Nicoletti Bypass Solution.

The lining of the pipe was the suggestion of Joseph Nicoletti, Commissioner of Public Works, as a solution to the controversy over just how high the water in the pipe was running. Mr. Cappelli's consultants said, based on flow meter tests, that it was averaging 25% tops and 15% at its lowest based on their flow meter tests.

Mr. Nicoletti doubted those results and purchased the exact same machine for the city of White Plains to check out the results  over objection by Mayor Delfino. Mr. Nicoletti's flow readings showed the sewer was averaging less than 20% average capacity.

However, the meter used only measures flow rate, it does not measure volume.

Mr. Nicoletti, leary of his Sewer Stick  measurements (the standard way of measuring volume of sewer flow in cities and towns nationwide). His stick tests showed the sewer running at or near capacity. He wrote a memo to George Gretsas in September, 2001, (as the City Center approached approval), warning of "catastrophic results" if the City Center effluent from its two apartment towers were to be added to the Main Street sewer line.

The September 2001 memo surfaced by luck only last fall as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Susan Elan of The Journal News. What the memo confirmed was that Mr. Nicoletti had serious reservations about the sewer capacity that was surpressed by the City's former Executive Officer from the Common Council.

All Council members told WPCNR they had never seen the memorandum, and did not take seriously, or did not noitce, or thought to be just "boilerplate" the paragraph written into the Site Plan Approval  in which Mr. Nicoletti noted his concerns about the sewer.

As a result of the surfacing of that memo by Ms. Elan's brilliant and gutsy FOIA, producing the effluent memo,The Mayor,  Mr. Cappelli, Mr. Nicoletti and the Common Council agreed on relining the Main Street Sewer and building a separate "direct connect" sewer line, just to make sure for the Cappelli Hotel Condoplex would be safely effluented. That Hotel project (known more prosaicly as 221 Main Street) was just approved in June of 2004.

WPCNR has learned the city relined a portion of the sewer line south of  Main Street on Broadway within the last year which has substantially improved the flow on South Broadway and also required and had relined the Mamaroneck Avenue sewer line as a condition of the JPI 300 Mamaroneck Avenue Jefferson project.