The bids are in on DDC's south Queens sewer rebuild. Six contractors showed up for the Aug. 10 opening on PIN 8502026SE0009C — reconstruction of existing sewers across the southern end of Queens — and Maspeth Supply Co., LLC is the apparent low at $9,875,699. That is under the city's own number: DDC put its engineer's estimate at $13,500,000.
Lady Liberty Contracting Corp. sat second at $11,105,351, 12.5 percent above the low — so two firms priced the work under the city's estimate and everybody else priced it over. The middle pack all cleared the city's figure: JRCruz Corp. at $14,414,075, J. Pizzirusso Landscaping Corp. at $15,998,945 and DiFazio Industries LLC at $16,476,708.75. Tully Construction Co. Inc. topped the tab at $27,035,834. That range — from Maspeth Supply's number to Tully's — says the bidders read the risk in this work very differently, and six names on a Queens sewer job is a real field, not a walkover.
What the low bidder signed up for is some of the least glamorous work in heavy construction: rebuilding sewers that are already in the ground. Reconstruction contracts like this one replace existing lines that are past their useful life — broken pipe, undersized pipe, pipe that has quit doing its job — at locations across the borough's south side, as the contract title lays out. The sewers belong to DEP; DDC manages the construction. That is the same city arrangement that has delivered the big Queens drainage jobs, where DDC builds and DEP funds and operates what gets built.
This is the part of Queens where drainage is not an abstraction. The city's own agencies have documented recurring flooding in the low-lying neighborhoods at the south end of the borough, and stood up a $2.64 billion Southeast Queens program to deal with it — 46 projects of new storm sewers, catch basins and water mains, 24 of them already complete, by DDC's own count. A reconstruction contract is a different animal from that buildout: this is keeping the existing system alive rather than adding new capacity. But it serves the same people. When an old sewer under a Queens street fails, the water does not wait — it ponds in intersections and finds basements. Replacing those lines before they collapse is what keeps a rainstorm from becoming a cleanup bill on somebody's block.
The usual caveat, because it always applies: DDC posts these results as preliminary, and an apparent low bid is not an award. The numbers still get verified, the low bidder's paperwork and responsibility get reviewed, and the contract has to register before anyone mobilizes. Low and under the estimate is a good place to be standing, but until DDC confirms it, $9,875,699 is a bid, not a contract.
One thing worth filing away for anyone pricing sewer work in Queens: on this tab, the two lowest numbers came in under what the city budgeted. Next time a DDC sewer estimate lands on your desk at $13,500,000, remember that at least two shops saw this one cheaper — and four saw it costing more.