STEUBENVILLE — Nearly three months after their fieldhouse was flooded, Edison Local School District officials want to know who is picking up the nearly $500,000 tab for the damage that was done.

School Superintendent Bill Beattie made it clear this week he thinks either Johnson Controls Inc., the Texas-based company overseeing Jefferson County’s multi-million-dollar water meter upgrade, or PMI, the subcontractor Johnson Controls brought in to do the actual meter replacements, should already have stepped up.

But Johnson Control’s M. Scott Summers told Jefferson County Commissioners this week a third-party contractor, Koorsen Fire & Safety, had been called in by the school district to work on a backflow preventer valve line that day and until the expert PMI hired to look into what happened completes his report, no one can definitively say who was at fault.

“This is going to have to go through the process,” Summers said. “If the claim adjusters say, ‘Johnson Controls, you’re responsible,’ our carrier is going to pay the bill. If they say it’s PMI, then PMI’s carrier will pay the bill. If they say it’s Koorsen, then that’s where the problem is.”

PMI’s crew, at Johnson Controls direction, had replaced the water meter at the fieldhouse, but once installation was complete and service had been restored, county officials said a backflow preventer started to leak. Neither PMI nor Johnson Controls are certified to work on backflows, so Koorsen, the firm Edison routinely uses for its backflow inspections, was called in. Water service was restored but, hours after the contractors left, Jefferson County’s water department was notified the “meter blew off” in the field house, spilling thousands of gallons of water onto the gymnasium floor.

The fact that it was the district that brought Koorsen in to address the backflow problem complicates the situation, Summers said. Had it been PMI that called them in, there would have been no question of liability.

Beattie maintains that, since the burst pipe was nowhere near the backflow that Koorsen worked on, it’s not going to be that company’s fault, though he also pointed out he is “not a plumber or a claims adjuster.”

Summers said that’s why the “subject matter expert’s” report commissioned by PMI is so important.

“There was an inspection by a subject matter expert who came to the site on March 3. He made an evaluation. We don’t know what that evaluation was; there’s been no response yet. At this point, it’s still under investigation, under review and investigation,” Summers said, later adding that, “They’ll come to a conclusion, right? They might not know who is actually liable, but they will come to a financial conclusion of who is responsible. Will it be Johnson Controls, will it be PMI or will it be Koorsen, we don’t know. …There was clearly something that happened but I can’t tell you (who is at fault). It’s almost like a situation where ‘who is the last one that touched it’… and Koorsen was the last one that touched it. I’m not saying it was Koorsen’s fault, because we don’t know. But they came in after us and it was four hours after they had done their work that the water burst happened … I’m not inferring they are responsible, I’m just telling you want the process is.”

Beattie said the board opted to “open up a claim” to expedite repairs, rather than wait for the liability question to be resolved, in hopes the fieldhouse would be ready for graduation in May. “In our mind, it’s pretty clear who the fault belongs to. Whether they want to admit to that or not is a concern,” Beattie said.

While claims adjusters for Johnson and PMI gave them the go-ahead to do it, Summers said opening the claim automatically sends it into subrogation, a legal process that allows insurers to be reimbursed by the party ultimately deemed to have been at fault.

And now that it’s in subrogation, he said the process must be allowed to play out.

“By going with your carrier, you are able to get the gym done,” he said. “All of the claims adjusters gave them the authorization to proceed, meaning that we do understand there’s a concern here. (But) there’s something that needs to be reviewed and decided, and once that’s done, the reimbursement will go back to to the school district. Who is going to reimburse? If it’s JCI or PMI, I can guarantee you that the money will get there. If it’s Corson, then it’s a different story. And I just, unfortunately, I can’t speak on Koorsen’s behalf. They have not come to the table. We have asked them to provide (information), do whatever, and their position is ‘We work for the school. We have nothing to do with this.”

Beattie told commissioners they had planned to let the process play out, but that was before the district’s baseball field sustained about $50,000 damage from the March 13 windstorm that tore through the area — their third “major claim” in the last nine months: In June, Edison claimed $125,000 in damages to its band room caused by flooding.

“(The fieldhouse) is going to be about half a million dollars. It’s not our fault, and really, truly, it needs to be addressed,” he said, pointing out it’s “coming down to crunch time, and we need to figure this out.”

“If Johnson Controls or PMI refuse to step up and take responsibility … then we’re probably going to end up in a situation that … none of us want.

“I feel from day one that Johnson control should have taken responsibility for this and held their subcontractor liable for the issues that happened,” Beattie said. “So instead, we’re in a position now as a district that we’re paying the claim and we have to subrogate to try to get whoever is at fault to take care of this at some point in time. In my mind, I think two and a half months (is long enough for them) to make a determination.”

He said the district is waiting for its claims adjustor to authorize “the final cleaning.” “Probably by the second week of May, we should have everything tied up,” he said.