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KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – After being awarded over $2 million in damages, the Keystone Heights Airpark can start repairing problems that started after the 2008 construction of two new hangars.

About 10 years ago, in October 2008, the small airport entered into a contract with Pipeline Contractors Inc., a Starke-based company that was awarded the bid for a hangar construction project. Once Pipeline had finished, the airport started noticing problems with the work.

The pavement outside and concrete flooring inside the two new hangars had started to heave upward and form cracks throughout. The airport stopped payment while officials looked into why the materials used in the project had failed. Their research determined the flaws were a problem with the sub-base layer used in the building process. In 2010, Pipeline filed a suit against the Keystone Airpark Authority for non-payment.

Airpark officials answered back with a counter-suit, claiming breach of contract against Pipeline had resulted in the brand new and now-cracked taxiways and concrete floors surrounding their clients’ stored planes, as well as seeking payment from The Hanover Insurance Company who had taken out a performance bond on Pipeline’s fulfillment of the contract with the airport.

About seven years after the suits were filed, they went to court for a seven-day trial in October of last year in Clay County’s Fourth Judicial Court with Circuit Judge Don Lester hearing the case

“As is usual in construction disputes, there can be no question that a failure occurred,” Lester wrote in his judgment. “The core matter to be resolved by the court is why the failure occurred.”

In his report, Lester starts by outlining Pipeline’s responsibility under the contract, which boils down to two things: the company is to provide all of its own work and materials, and guarantee that work and those materials after the project’s completion. Pipeline is also required to get approval of materials from the project’s engineer.

It was discovered that Pipeline had used a material known as EZBase underneath the asphalt and buildings in the airport project.

EZBase, though allowed at the time, has since been banned in Clay County after a 2013 vote from the Board of County Commissioners. The material is a byproduct of burning coal that was marketed and delivered in the area by the Jacksonville Electric Authority. The BCC vote came following environmental concerns and overall unpredictability of the material as well as a push to ban it outright in the state of Georgia.

Soil samples from the site showed that EZBase was not necessary for this project as the soil maintained the necessary properties for use as a sub-base natively with no additives.

Judge Lester wrote that the use of a sub-base material when none was necessary was a breach of Pipeline’s duty to material selection under the contract, furthering his point in that they breached the contract again by failing to get the EZBase material inspected or approved by the engineer before placing it at the site.

Decade-old trouble comes to an end for Keystone Airpark [Hanover]