Despite some sand boils found along the Mississippi River, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Army’s chief of staff, said “the levee system has done its job, up and down this river.” Mike Stack, the chief of engineering management for the Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District, said about a dozen boils have been spotted along the levee system, with most in the Baton Rouge area. The agency is busy sandbagging, shoring up and securing them. [Source: NOLA.com via Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Image: The Natchez Democrat]
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Deleware Forced to Redesign Unfinished Bridge Because of Consolidation Issues
[Update 2/10/08] Updated the name of the bridge. [/Update]
DelDOT is putting the new Indian River Bridge over out to bid. The current bridge is said to be in danger of failing between 2008 and 2012 according to the Army Corps of Engineers, seems to be related to scour. From what I hear, the tidal currents at that inlet being spanned over are tremendous, with water velocities on the order of 35 mph.
In 2005, Mactec, a geotechnical firm, provided a geotechnical report and associated recommendations to DelDOT for how to construct the 45-ft high approach embankments for a 1,400-ft long bridge in light of a 60-ft clay layer (sounds like pre-loading). However, the embankments are not settling as Mactec predicted (not sure if its more or less, probably less meaning slower) and are "shifting laterally" (squeezing?) so the DOT is going with a longer bridge to span the problem soil. More after the break.
ASCE: Cease and Desist over Video Spoof
The American Society of Civil Engineers ASCE sent a cease and desist letter to the owner of the Levees.Org website notifying them to remove a video spoof of its post-Katrina levee inspection. Of course, through the wonders of the internet, Levees.org removed it from YouTube, but someone else posted it again. And because of all the fuss, it’s more popular than it would have been otherwise with over 16,000 views at the time of this post. Click through to watch it.
New Orleans Repeats Deadly Levee Blunders
That is the title of a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on post-Katrina levee issues in New Orleans (by way of ASCE Smart Brief). I think the article is somewhat sensationalized, but they do cite some interesting parallels between the levee reconstruction efforts made after Katrina and the levee construction/reconstruction that occurred after Hurricane Betsy in 1965.
The article also discusses a recent US Army audit with some disturbing although not unexpected findings:
An initial September 2010 target to complete the $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work has slipped to mid-2011. Then last September, an Army audit found 84 percent of work behind schedule because of engineering complexities, environmental provisos and real estate transactions. The report added that costs would likely soar.
A more recent analysis shows the start of 84 of 156 projects was delayed – 15 of them by six months or more. Meanwhile, a critical analysis of what it would take to build even stronger protection – 500-year-type levees – was supposed to be done last December but remains unfinished.