Posts tagged levee-board

More on seepage - and what the Corps is holding back

June 12th, 2008 by Loki

Once more HumidCity is proud to syndicate the emails of engineer Matt McBride, the man who formerly helmed Fix The Pumps.

Dear New Orleanians,

A couple of weeks ago, I sent out an email about a report the Corps is holding back. It is the final report for the London Avenue canal load test, and it has been delayed for months. In fact the test took place last August. After I sent that email, I heard they are planning to release it before June 15th. We’ll see.

While members of the public and their appointed representatives on the East Bank Levee Authority cannot yet see the report, the Corps is all too content to trumpet the success of the test to their contractors and fellow employees.

Last week, at the Midwest Levee Conference in St. Louis, the lead Corps engineer and project manager from a Corps contractor for the load test gave an extensive presentation about the test. The Conference was co-sponsored by the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). SAME is the Corps’ professional organization for their engineers - kind of their private clubhouse.

You can see the June 3rd presentation on the load test here:

All the presentations are available here.

What I find interesting are the following:

1) No mention of the the external peer review of the test is mentioned, nor of the Levee Board’s insistence on including testing for seepage effects (originally, the test was only going to measure whether the wall moved, not whether water would move underneath it). In fact there’s absolutely no information whatsoever on the locals’ key involvement in ensuring the test was properly vetted. The presentation gives the impression that the Corps did everything themselves, and that they should be congratulated (Actual bullet point from the last slide: “Test was a success. No water through the wall!“). The fact is they had to be pushed into the peer review on the test.

2) Page after page of actual test data are displayed. None of this data has been made available to the public in New Orleans.

3) The last line of the presentation is a laugher: “Detailed results are available for additional study to enhance the engineering understanding of I-wall performance.” Available to whom, precisely? Other Corps engineers and their contractors? What about making the results available to the public whom the Corps is supposedly protecting before they present them to their buddies?

This is just more evidence of the tin ear the Corps has when it comes to dealing with the public. There’s no way this presentation should have taken place before the report was released to the greater New Orleans community.

Matt

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Posted in Corps of Engineers, Dirty, Filthy Politics, Levees, Matt McBride, Rising Water, Sinn Fein, We Are Not OK | 4 Comments »

How Safe is the 17th St. Canal?

August 2nd, 2007 by Loki
Here we go folks, missives from Matt McBride- our Guardian Engineer. After outing the Coprs to the press concerning their faulty pumps he has ceased blogging, but like most of us cannot stand at the sidelines when he sees wrongdoing. I will be posting his emails as I receive them. And now, the man himself:
Dear New Orleanians and those who care about our city,
A couple of weeks ago, there was a stir about erosion of the west wall of the 17th Street canal. Here’s one of the articles:
Corps to test erosion at 17th Street Canal (Times-Picayune, July 20, 2007)
WWL-TV did a story on the evening of July 25, 2007 in which the Corps said there was nothing to worry about. That was the last report. it is linked here:
http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/VideoPlayer/videoPlayer.php?s=y&vidId=161685&catId=53
A substory was when did the Corps know about this erosion, and did they inform the local levee board(s) about it? A clear answer didn’t really come out of the coverage.
I can provide that answer, and more.
http://www.box.net/shared/tt79p4hsmd
The above link goes to an internal inspection report of the entire 17th Street canal performed by Corps of Engineers employees in May, 2006, over 14 months ago. Among many findings and recommendations for repairs, it documents erosion in the exact spot that was the subject of the press accounts two weeks ago (on the west side of the canal just north of the Veterans Memorial Blvd bridge). It recommends placement of riprap (piles of stone) to staunch the erosion.
But there is far, far more to this report. Through a series of pictures, it documents serious (and admittedly not-so-serious) flaws in the levees and walls along both sides of the canal, from the lake all the way back to Pumping Station #6. Among the serious flaws:
- open pipes penetrating through the walls where they join the levee
- numerous spots of erosion on both sides of the canal along its entire length
- 20 foot long gouges in the levee
- wall segments actually displaced from where they should be (the Corps terms it “jutted”) in multiple spots, some by up to 2 inches.
- spots where the levee and the bottom of the concrete walls have separated, leaving a large gap
This report was attached as an appendix to another report (the 17th Street Canal Safe Water Level report) that was issued by the Corps two months ago, or 12 months after it was generated. It was on a CD that came with the 4″ thick main report. By the way, you can see the main part of that SWL report linked here.
It is, to say the least, “unclear” if the May, 2006 inspection was passed along to the locals. One has a hard time believing that if it were passed along, that there wouldn’t have been immediate action to address these issues. I happen to know that other than emergency repairs along the east bank of the canal near Vets (which were done in response to the Safe Water Level report, not this earlier inspection), none of the issues have been addressed. No rip rap has been placed anywhere except the emergency repair area, near the breach, and near the gates. None has been placed along the Jefferson Parish (west) side.
So the outlines of the story are this:
A) The Corps had a report listing dozens of individual flaws in the condition of the levees and walls along the 17th Street canal for over a year and did not release it
B) Most of those flaws still exist.
C) So naturally, the condition of the canal is suspect.
The questions are:
A) Why did this report languish inside the Corps for a year?
B) Are there similar reports from the same timeframe for the Orleans Avenue, London Avenue, and Industrial canals?
C) What will be/has been done, if anything, to address these problems?
Take a look at the pictures and tell me that you’re not disturbed.
By the way, there are two other things:
1) I got this report on Tuesday, July 31, 2007.
2) I sent it along to many, many members of the local and national media (including the Times-Picayune) yesterday. When I didn’t see any coverage this morning, I decided to inform the general public. Frankly, the report speaks for itself, and it would not take very long to bang out a story on it and provide a link. Since the traditional media have now had 24 hours and have done nothing, I’m going to do their job for them.

Matt

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Posted in Defend New Orleans, Dirty, Filthy Politics, Hurricane, Levees, Picking Up The Pieces, Sinn Fein, We Are Not OK | 2 Comments »