Lynch seeks warranty on Big Dig work

US Representative Stephen F. Lynch said yesterday he will ask Big Dig managers Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff to agree to pay for any future maintenance or construction problems that surface in the trouble-plagued Interstate 93 tunnels beneath downtown Boston.

The South Boston Democrat said that tunnel leaks and major wall defects in the $14.6 billion tunnel system may create massive problems in decades to come and that taxpayers will be forced to pay for repairs unless the private-sector managers agree to a formal warranty. He said he will ask for such an agreement during congressional hearings on tunnel defects on Friday in Boston.

''Do we have enough resources to address the long-term maintenance needs of this tunnel?" said Lynch, a member of the the House Committee on Government Reform, which will conduct the hearings. ''Will it be a 75-year tunnel, or will we have to build in a contingency for problems far sooner? . . . I'd like to hear from them that they're willing to hold the taxpayers harmless."

Lynch disclosed his plans to put the Big Dig's private-sector managers on the hot seat as Governor Mitt Romney ramped up his effort to oust the state's public-sector Big Dig overseer, Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew J. Amorello. Yesterday, Romney's lawyers submitted a brief to the Supreme Judicial Court accusing Amorello of causing ''ongoing, worsening, and in certain respects irreversible" harm to the state through his oversight of the project and his agency.

In a 64-page brief, Romney's general counsel, Mark D. Nielsen, used some of the strongest language yet to make a case that the court should give Romney the power to remove Amorello as Turnpike Authority chairman. In the brief, Romney accused Amorello of ''excessive secretiveness" and failing to ''organize an effective 'cost recovery' effort, resulting in greater amounts being expended on cost recovery than the amount actually recovered."

Amorello ''wasted public resources" on personnel, media consultants, and public ribbon-cutting celebrations and filed a Big Dig finance plan earlier this year that the federal government found to lack a credible bottom-line cost estimate, the brief charged. He also did not ensure that the Turnpike Authority complied with open meeting laws and did not maintain ''appropriate separation between the Turnpike Authority and its project manager," Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, according to the brief.

Finally, the turnpike chairman ''has undermined . . . public confidence in the safety of the 'Big Dig' tunnels," the brief said.

Amorello, appointed in 2002 by Acting Governor Jane Swift, has repeatedly rebuffed Romney's requests that he resign, including in November, after the Globe first reported that the Interstate 93 tunnels are riddled with hundreds of leaks.

Romney asked the SJC last month to clarify whether he has the power to remove Amorello from his chairmanship. Yesterday both Romney and Amorello filed briefs on the issue.

In his agency's brief, Amorello argued that Romney does not have the legal authority to remove him from his chairmanship.

''The governor may replace the chairman only by persuading the Legislature to amend" state laws, ''not by attempting to circumvent these requirements through improper invocation of this court's" jurisdiction, wrote Andrew Good, the lawyer hired by Amorello to write the agency's brief.

But while Romney's focus has remained squarely on Amorello, it appears that Lynch and others preparing for Friday's hearing will largely be keeping the heat on Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, which created the Big Dig's initial designs, oversaw the design and construction process, and was responsible for quality assurance on the project's construction.

Lynch said troubles that have recently come to light in the tunnels' construction raise serious concerns about problems emerging decades from now and about who will pay for them.

''I'm not worried about the short-term, but 25, 40 years out, if Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff are long gone . . . I'm not sure who will be around to pick up the tab, so indemnification would be very important," Lynch said.

Lynch said he is seeking a formal agreement, but he did not go into details of what form such an agreement would take.

Among those scheduled to testify Friday will be slurry wall specialist George J. Tamaro, who served as an independent engineer with the Turnpike Authority until last month, when he left after accusing the agency of stonewalling his efforts to investigate the causes of hundreds of leaks in the tunnels' roof and the more than 100 defects found in the tunnel walls.

Tamaro said he will tell the Government Reform Committee that problems should not be expected after final inspections of the walls prior to opening the tunnels to traffic.

''You should be correcting [defects] as you go along," Tamaro said. ''That's what's disconcerting. And the roof leak problem is concerning because it's long term . . . and can corrode the connections that hold the roof up."

Summing up Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff's oversight of construction quality on the tunnels, Tamaro said: ''If you don't look, you don't find. I think you could have found a lot of them."

Howard Menaker, a spokesman for Bechtel Infrastructure, the San Francisco-based firm that leads the management joint venture of Bechtel and Parsons Brinckerhoff, declined to respond directly to Lynch's call for a formal indemnification agreement. However, Menaker defended the company's tenure on the project.

''As we've said before, we are proud of our work on the Big Dig," Menaker said in an e-mailed statement. ''We look forward to a full and fair hearing before the committee on Friday."

The Big Dig was initially billed as a $2.5 billion project that would be paid for almost entirely by the federal government and would end in the late 1990s. The project is now slated to wrap up this fall, and the federal government has capped its investment in the project at $8.5 billion, or just over half the cost.

Globe correspondent Janette Neuwahl contributed to this report. Raphael Lewis's e-mail is rlewis@globe.com.