FITCHBURG — During the April 29, 2025, Fitchburg Public Works Committee meeting, city officials warned that ongoing water infrastructure repairs at the Meetinghouse Reservoir could leave the city without water if a temporary bypass system fails — raising concerns about risk management, project oversight, and contractor accountability.
“It was a very stressful and long evening,” Public Works Commissioner Nicholas Erickson said during Tuesday’s Public Works Committee meeting, describing the city’s effort late Monday night to activate a temporary bypass pumping system at the Meetinghouse Reservoir. The bypass, switched on around 10:30 p.m. on April 28 and monitored until about 1:00 a.m. the following morning, is keeping water flowing to Fitchburg’s regional treatment plant while the reservoir’s gatehouse—an essential structure that regulates the city’s water supply—is taken offline for structural and mechanical rehabilitation.
The repairs involve overhauling aging components that control how water is released from the reservoir, a system Erickson said is critical to the city’s infrastructure. “We didn’t lose water — there’s no boil order water today, so the guys are doing a great job,” he said, praising crews who stayed on-site to monitor the system through the night.
The bypass is expected to operate for about three weeks while crews work on the gatehouse that channels water from the city’s main reservoir to the regional treatment plant. Erickson said that any failure in the temporary system during that time would leave Fitchburg without a functioning water supply. “If that doesn’t work or fails for any reason, the city will be without water,” Erickson said.
The discussion then shifted to deteriorating road conditions in the Greektown neighborhood, specifically on Clarendon Street and the upper part of Main Street, when Ward 2 Councilor Paul Beauchemin raised concerns about visible damage in areas affected by last year’s sewer separation project.
“Clarendon Street — I noticed that when I drive up Main Street, the upper part in Greektown, the road’s dented in the middle where they dug it all up and put new sewer separation,” Beauchemin said during the April 29 Public Works Committee meeting.
Public Works Commissioner Nicholas Erickson explained that on Clarendon Street, the city had completed most of the subgrade work and then applied a binder coat before winter. “The binder has a lot of seams where castings were adjusted and brought to grade,” he said. “Each of those seams is a penetration point for water. When you have snow and ice, you have water that gets down in between those seams, it freezes and it expands and it creates those frost heaves…some of that was expected over the winter months.”
He added that the city is working with the contractor, Lazaro, to install additional sub-drains in areas where frost heaving was most severe. “They’re working with Lazaro to try to take care of that as a way to combat some of the frost that we did see,” Erickson said.
Councilor Paul Beauchemin asked whether the city receives guarantees from contractors when repairs are made after sewer projects. “How long do we get — do they give us a warranty, a guarantee that the roads won’t start sagging?” he asked.
“Typically, a contractor guarantee is only a year,” Erickson replied. Later adding, “Unfortunately, problems with roadways and such don’t usually show up till well after a year. So if we don’t catch anything during the construction progress, usually we’re stuck with it.”
Regarding the Main Street area near the Greek Festival route, Erickson said the contractor was only required to apply a temporary patch, with full reconstruction and sidewalk redesign now underway. “I’m hoping to have that sidewalk reconstructed and the roadway repaved prior to the Greek Festival in the fall,” he said, but noted that several steps remain before that timeline can be confirmed.
The committee also revisited ongoing concerns about cemetery capacity. Erickson reported that ground-penetrating radar was recently used to evaluate a potential expansion area at Forest Hill Cemetery, near Rollstone and Mount Elam roads. “It looks like there is a large section that has ledge, but maybe another area that we can work around,” he said. “We’re in the process of trying to figure out if that’s a viable spot to get us even 100 or so graves.”
Erickson added that Councilor Sally Cragin has been working to form a “Friends of Fitchburg Cemeteries” group to raise money for cemetery improvements, including repairs to the Forest Hill Abbey Mausoleum. That project remains on hold due to lack of funding, with a full restoration estimated at $3 million and even a limited fix exceeding $1 million.
“We’ve done a preliminary/conceptual design there to come up with an order of magnitude cost,” Erickson said of the Forest Hill Abbey Mausoleum project. “That cost is roughly $3 million to do the whole project. We’ve come up with a scaled back version of that cost just to repair the exterior building envelope, and that number is a little over a million.”
The city is weighing the purchase of a new cemetery parcel because preparing the land opposite Forest Hill would be too costly, Erickson told the committee. Officials hope to find at least 10 acres that are level, well‑drained, and free of ledge—traits that grow scarce once developers stake their claims. “We are considering that option,” he said.
