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There was an atmosphere of Stanley-finding- Livingston on Monday, May 12, in the City Hall Annex. After months of slog, the man hired to rescue the city's most important civic proj- ect from ruin and disaster had fought his way free to propose a solution. Robert Garland, a design engineer with McKim & Creed, has been trying for months to remedy a plan that could have left one-third of the city without sewer service for months after a hit from a Category 2 hurricane. City Utilities Director Mitt Tidwell was stuck with a design he inherited that did not work, was vastly over budget and, worst of all, com- pletely stalled. The plan was the legacy of AECOM, another engineering design company that nearly destroyed the Osprey Avenue bridge crossing Hudson Bayou, almost injected drilling lubri- cant into the waterway and failed to dig deep enough to let the sewage flow downhill. And it used a design neither Garland nor Tidwell had ever seen — a totally underground sewer lift station incorporating seven underground facilities. While AECOM and the city are in court over the professionalism of the original work, actual building of anything is at a halt, leav- ing an abandoned construction site in the middle of Luke Wood Park at the junction of U.S. 41 and U.S. 301 just south of downtown Former Mayor Mollie Cardamone (second row, left) and City Commissioner Susan Chapman (second row, center) were among attendees at the May 12 meeting on Lift Station 87. Photo by Norman Schimmel EXTENDED WARRANTIES AND STORM SURGE PROTECTION FOCUS OF LATEST LIFT STATION 87 DISCUSSIONS By Stan Zimmerman City Editor Sarasota News Leader May 16, 2014 Page 51