Imminent

The lakefront hydraulic pumps are rusting to bits, and have been since they were installed. Some have already fallen apart. The Corps was warned all of them would do the same thing "imminently" in mid-2009, and did next to nothing for nearly the entire 2009 hurricane season. For those that don't want to read the whole story, evidence is in this report from the Corps New Orleans District's pump repair contractor.

Only in recent weeks has the Corps' New Orleans District embarked on a crash repair initiative hidden from the public in plain sight, in an effort to make up for years of deferred - but not unfunded - preventive maintenance on pumps which they knew from the very beginning would fall apart within a matter of a couple of years, if not quicker. That lack of maintenance likely left New Orleans' front line flood defenses in a precarious state of decay during the entire length of last year's hurricane season, and may have actually played a part in a year-end flooding event. [UPDATE: It is more likely that the December 8, 2009 systemwide failure of the Corps SCADA control system for the pumps and gates played a larger part in the decision not to lower the gates and run the pumps during widespread flooding and elevated lake levels on December 12-13, 2009. Details can be found in my subsequent post, "SCADA."] It also may have been a pawn in the Corps recent negotiations with the state to impose their inadequate Option 1 scheme. I'll get to the bits about the current work, the year-end flooding event, and Option 1 in future posts. For now, I'm just going to concentrate on the 2009 repairs.

In spring, 2009, the Corps issued their first work order on contract W912P8-08-D-0090, a potentially five-year-long pump maintenance they inked with a company named Healtheon in 2008.

That $28,138 work order, whose value was later increased by $1487.43 made reference to pulling three pumps at 17th Street because of "hydraulic oil leaking problems:"

"Repair hydraulic oil leaking problems of one 60" hydraulic pump #10W and two 40"[sic - should be 42"] bridge hydraulic pumps #1 and #6 at 17th Street Canal. One MWI technician is needed for two days on May 28 and May 29 and three days during the week of June 1-5. The exact date of these three days will be determined later due to the availability of the crane. Healtheon will coordinate closely with Corps employees, Ms Lynn Tinto and Jack Rouquette, during pump pullup, repair, and reinstallation of the pumps."

As a quick reminder, most of the pumps at all three interim closure sites on the lakefront are hydraulically powered. Hydraulic oil is raised to approximately 3000 psi by hydraulic pumps manufactured by Denison Hydraulics at engine skids placed in sheds remote from the pumps (though at 17th Street, some of the pumps have their engine skids adjacent to them). That pressurized oil flows along hundreds of feet of pipe (or a few dozen feet of rubber hose, in the case of the 17th Street skid-adjacent pumps) to the water pumps in the canals. Inside the water pumps, the energy of the pressurized hydraulic oil is translated to rotational energy by a hydraulic motor manufactured by a Texas outfit known as Rineer.

The Rineer motor (the original was four port model 125, though it has since been modified - see below) is attached to a shaft which spins an impeller, pushing stormwater out of the canal, through the pump, and down 9-foot-diameter pipes which travel past the gates to the lake. The depressurized hydraulic oil travels through coolers mounted on the water pump, and then back through more piping to a reservoir at the drive unit. From there, the cycle repeats.

There are 18 60" hydraulic pumps at 17th Street, and 14 42" models. The size (60" or 42") refers to diameter of the pump housing. The original order to MWI for the hydraulic pumps in January, 2006 was for 34 60" pumps, with 12 each going in at 17th Street and London Avenue, and the remaining 10 going in at Orleans Avenue. Those were the "Phase 1" pumps. Another six 60" pumps were installed at 17th Street later in 2006 ("Phase 2"), and the 14 42" pumps went in during the spring of 2007 ("Phase 3").

There are also 11 direct drive units at 17th Street and 8 direct drive units at London Avenue, installed during the spring and summer of 2007. Those pumps have their drives directly coupled to their shafts, eliminating all the problems inherent in a hydraulically powered system. Here's the layout of the pumps at 17th Street:


Here's the numbering of each pump at 17th Street:


Here's the London Ave layout, with the original 12 hydraulic pumps noted as "Phase 1:"


And the numbering for the pumps at London Avenue:



The numbering at Orleans Avenue is similar to at London Avenue, with hydraulic pumps E1 through E5 on the east side and W1 through W5 on the west side.

The piping which conveys the hydraulic oil is coupled to the water pumps via hoses. To repair the water pumps, the hoses must be decoupled. There is no way to blow the hydraulic oil back to the drive units, so the oil spills in the canal when the hoses are detached. As it turns out, these "planned" oil spills are excellent indicators of work (or trouble) happening on the hydraulic pumps.

That's because the Corps also has a contract for oil spill cleanups. It is with Quaternary Resource Investigations (QRI) of Baton Rouge. Every time a pump is pulled, oil is spilled, so QRI should be on site to clean it up. QRI also provides and maintains the permanent oil protection booms that are at each site.

Thus, if a pump (or pumps) is pulled, QRI gets a task order on their contract. According to federal law and the Corps own oil spill response plans (linked: 17th Street SPCC; Orleans Avenue SPCC; London Avenue SPCC), the oil spill should also be reported to the National Response Center (NRC), and it should show up on the NRC report query website. Depending on the size of the spill (the state only requires spill reports for spills over 42 gallons, or 1 barrel), the state should also have a record of the spill on the LDEQ Electronic Document Management Service website. Reporting to the state is also a requirement under the law and the Corps' written plans.

So back to the May, 2009 pump repairs...

The work was - according to the task order - to take place in late May and early June. Every year in late May, the Corps holds a hurricane preparedness exercise, part of which they put on in front of the cameras of the local news crews. It is mostly a dog-and-pony show. In 2009, the Corps had the media out to the London Avenue canal gates on May 27, 2009 (Fox 8 story here), which was a departure from their usual M.O. Whenever the New Orleans District wants to emphasize how wonderful the gates and pumps are, they have the press out to the much larger 17th Street site. No one in the local press seemed to question why they were at London instead.

However, the Corps themselves obliquely acknowledged the 17th Street work in their post-exercise press release on May 27, 2009, which was the same day the repair work was due to commence:

"Because of previously scheduled maintenance on some of the pumps at the 17th St. Canal (due to be complete next week), the pumps could not be turned on immediately following the gate closure for the safety of the contractors working in the area. However, each of the pumps, excluding those affected by the ongoing maintenance, were run through the start up cycle at some point during the exercise and effectively pumped. Those affected by the ongoing maintenance will be run when the work is complete."

The "previously scheduled" thing is a canard. The work appears to have begun in a hurry, since the Healtheon task order #1 has an effective date of June 17, 2009, or three weeks after the work began (likely with some kind of unofficial Notice to Proceed like an email or a phone call). Other contracts issued for the work all had dates after the work began, except for the crane rental contract, which went out less than a week before (see below). Also note how vague the press release is, giving the impression of "nothing to see here, move along." That was made easier by keeping the prying eyes of the local TV crews miles away from the 17th Street site.

A more detailed account of what was going on May 27, 2009 at 17th Street did get created: the QRI-written spill report for the pulling of 60" hydraulic pump W10. It was generated as part of QRI's work under task order #5. It gives an extensive narrative of that day's events:

"At 0630 hours on May 27, 2009, QRI's Field Supervisor and Field Technician arrived at the Orleans Canal storage (connex) box to retrieve staged spill response materials. At 0645 hours QRI's Field Manager and Site Safety Officer made contact with Corps employee Ms. Lynn Tinto. Following an 0715 Safety Meeting, QRI personnel launched from the 17th Street Canal boat launch and proceeded to the vicinity of the W 10 pump.

Pump W10 was isolated by installing both hard and soft boom[s] - to form a double boom around the perimeter of pump W10. Following placement of the boom, the QRI crew and boat staged on the lake side of the canal to allow USACE personnel to access pump W10.

At 1240 hours the pump was lifted out and approximately 40 gallons of hydraulic fluid was spilled. QRI's response crew placed napkins within the double boom area to absorb the spilled fluid. An additional 150 foot section of soft boom was placed outside the isolated area to absorb any oil escaping from the double-boomed section. QRI personnel used 12 1/2 additional bags of napkins during the cleanup process.

QRI's safety officer and USACE personnel discussed regulations outlined in the 17th Street Canal SPCC Plan and determined that notification to LDEQ was necessary. Incident number T115306 was assigned by LDEQ."

Note that notification of the National Response Center is oddly omitted. That's strange, because the state reportable quantity (RQ) for oil is 1 barrel (42 gallons), while the federal government RQ is any amount, no matter how tiny. Indeed, there is no report of this spill on the NRC website.

Anyway, the report describes a lot of activity. QRI took date-stamped pictures too:





It would have aroused questions. Keeping the cameras away sidestepped that possibility.

So they lifted out W10 and then what? It's not easy to tell. There's a number of other contract actions related to the work which went out before the time of the Healtheon task order, with its effective date of June 17, 2009 but its text requiring work before that date.

There's the $16,370 (note: FPDS-NG reports the value as $31,492) contract for rental of the crane seen in the photos above that pulled pump W10, W912P8-09-P-0210, issued to RPL Oil Distributor and Supply, LLC of Gretna, LA, a frequent go-to company for the New Orleans District for all manner of things. That contract was issued with an effective date of May 21, 2009:

"Furnish one (1) 240-ton capacity hydraulic truck crane, with operator and maintenance to work as directed by the Government to remove Pump No. 10 for repairs and replace same. Based on 5 days at 10 hours. Also includes Rental of Crane Mats for 5 days."

The Corps used their own, rented crane to pull the bridge pumps.

Speaking of those bridge pumps, there's also the $25,850 contract for scaffolding around those smaller 42" bridge pumps nos. 1 and 6 that were also pulled. That was contract W912P8-09-P-0219, also issued to RPL Oil Distributor and Supply with an effective date of June 1, 2009. The contract text reads:

"Rent and install scaffolding for bridge pumps #1 and # 6 at 17th Street Canal interim pumping station. Work will involve providing and installing 1 level of hanging scaffolding under the bridge at the interim structure of approximately 10 feet by 10 feet by 13 feet. The scaffolding and installation will meet OSHA codes. The government will provide crane service to load and unload material. Work will start on 1 Jun and will be completed by 31 Jul or sooner."

Also on the topic of the bridge pumps, there's the $9000 task order 56 on the Corps contract with their diving company, Independent Divers, dated June 3, 2009:

"Provide Dive Team to inspect bridge pumps 1 and 6, and its foundations, and remove any existing obstructions. All work shall be performed in accordance with the contract terms and conditions, this task order, and the attached Scope of Work. Diving shall be performed on 4 June 2009."

The scope of work reiterates the same basic text.

Finally, there was the $15,551.19 contract for all the stainless steel hardware, as well as hose assemblies, needed to replace all the carbon steel fittings and hose on all three pumps. That contract, W921P8-09-P-0222 was issued to QPL, Inc of Thibodaux, LA with an effective date of June 4, 2009. That contract text is a long listing of model numbers for hydraulic piping fittings and other bits of hardware, so I won't reproduce it here. Suffice to say that I figured out it is the exact requirement for replacement of three pumps' worth of piping, which matches with the fact that three pumps were pulled.

That's what this is about - all the carbon steel piping on the water pumps which conveys the hydraulic fluid had to be replaced because of severe corrosion. That's where the oil in the water was coming from - holes in the pipes. There's more on this below when I talk about the second round of 2009 repairs.

Based on all those individual pieces-and-parts contracts, I believe the Corps did the repairs on these pumps themselves and did not send them out to a shop (as they would later in the summer, see below). Indeed, with all that other contract activity, it's not clear exactly what Healtheon brought to the table. A report about W10 and the other two pumps pulled under this work order (QRI was also tasked with the cleanup on those two bridge pumps' removal under task order #6 of their contract) was required under the Healtheon contract, but it is unknown if was really written. If it was, the Corps hasn't released it yet - despite a pending FOIA request for the information.

There's scant information on the repairs to these three pumps beyond what I've gotten, but there is one more data point. A Flickr user named "billread" visited the 17th Street site at the time, apparently on July 12, 2009. He snapped a couple of shots (on Flickr here and here):





The tipoff that something is up in these shots is the presence of the Corps' rental crane up on the main structure. Unless it is needed, it is parked off the structure on the Jefferson Parish side of the site.



Unfortunately one cannot see pump W10 in these shots, but we have a good sight line at many of the bridge pumps, including what I believe to be then-recently repaired bridge pump number 6.

Zooming in, take a closer look:



Here's the same area as viewed from the other photo:



Given that bridge pumps #1 and #6 were pulled, it appears the pump I've marked as "Clean" is pump #6 in the water immediately after its refit. The cleanliness is an indication of a fresh paint job, while the rust or marine growth on the adjacent units indicates they've been in the water a while.

Combined with 1) the position of the crane toward the west end of the structure, and 2) the lack of scaffolding which was called for in the RPL contract (though that's not conclusive because we don't have definitive evidence that scaffolding was built; but it most likely was), and I believe these pictures were taken very soon after replacement of one or both of the bridge pumps. That would make sense, because it shouldn't take more than about a month to refit those pumps, and they were apparently pulled around the first week of June. The inspection dive by independent Divers was on June 4, and the QRI oil spill cleanup for the pump pull was likely on June 8 (according to QRI task order number 6)

But more important is that W10 and bridge pumps #1 and #6 were not the last pumps with corrosion-related hydraulic oil leaks - not by far.

In early July, 2009, there was another flurry of activity at 17th Street. Another task order (number 3, linked here) was issued to Healtheon for hydraulic pump repairs, this time for four more 60" pumps at 17th Street. The value was $349,357.35, and was later increased to $405,596.95 (in modification 1, to include "additional expense that could not have been anticipated until commencement of the work.") On this new work order, a lot more detail was provided.

The four pumps were 5E, 7E, 8W, and 9W. The problems with the original order of 34 pumps - of which pump 5E is a part - are well documented and legion.

As mentioned above, the main Healtheon contract called for creation of reports documenting the work they and their subs did on each task order. For task order #3, a report was generated in (I'm guessing) early September, 2009 after the work was complete. However, since it summarizes all the work happening on pumps 5E and 7E from July to September, including the initial evaluations, it's fair to assume that key Corps personnel were informally made aware of Conhagen's findings all throughout July. Though, considering they were already in the middle of replacing the piping on three other pumps because of corrosion, it's doubtful those findings came as a surprise.

You WANT to read this report and look at the pictures in it. Trust me.

The report includes passages such as the following:

"The first thing we did was to remove the inspection covers from the pumps and check the inside of the pumps for oil. Of the 4 units overhauled, only pump 5E had a significant amount of oil inside the pump (several hundred gallons). The oil was pump[ed] out and disposed of."

"Several hundred gallons:" verbiage similar to the Healtheon task order #3. However, in the task order, it was pump 7E that had the spill of approximately 700 gallons. Note that quantity is unlikely because the reservoirs on the engine skids hold less than half that volume of hydraulic oil (unless they were continually filling the oil reservoirs after test runs - yikes!). It probably represents an estimate of internal volume of the pump. In any case, while it is unclear if it was 7E, or 5E, or both that had major oil spills, it is crystal clear there was a bunch of oil in the water.

A spill of this size would certainly need to be reported to the state, and a spill of any size must reported to the National Response Center. Searches of both databases (including through public records requests) do not turn up reports for the spill, though QRI was dispatched - and presumably paid - under task order #7 of their spill cleanup contract. Curiously, the QRI task order claims the spill was small - between 10 and 50 gallons. The Healtheon task order for the repairs and the Conhagen repair report do not seem to describe a small spill. Given what Conhagen found, I'm strongly inclined to believe their narrative over the QRI task order.

And just to clarify (or confuse): it's not clear whether the pictures in the report below are of pump 5E or pump 7E, but the point is really moot. All the pumps sit in the same water, see the same weather conditions, and are exposed to the same salinity. Any problem that strikes one of them in such a catastrophic fashion would strike all of them similarly. And when I say, "all," I mean ALL the pumps across all three sites.

Other excerpts from Conhagen report:

"The motors and motor stands were removed from the diffuser housing. These were initially supposed to remain mounted, but the corrosion on the piping connection on the motor stand required that they be removed to make the repairs. One of the motors (5E) also had to be replaced due to being contaminated with water and having internal corrosion."

The Rineer motors were blamed for the severe vibration problems that struck these pumps upon their startup during the summer and fall of 2006. All of the motors were supposedly fixed by installing sturdier springs. It is extremely unclear if the Conhagen replacement of the Rineer motor on pump 5E included the sturdier springs, or if they went with the standard Rineer "Code 61" motors with flimsier springs that caused the original problems. Note that a beefier, high-pressure "Code 62" Rineer would work as well, and original installation of Code 62's in 2006 would have likely avoided the vibration problems altogether. That's because the standard Code 61 model has a maximum pressure of 3000 psi, which is also the operating pressure of the system. The maximum pressure of the Code 62 is 4500-5000 psi, well above the operating pressure and a much wiser choice (that's why they had the Code 62 spring package installed eventually). The Corps has not responded to a FOIA request for the purchasing details on the replacement Rineer motor. The motor (and other later replacements this year) were likely pulled from the Corps' stock of spare motors, but the lack of response to the FOIA request leaves that as speculation.

[Update, 7/23/12: The Corps eventually did respond to this FOIA request in July, 2011, and confirmed that the Rineer motor placed in pump 5E was from their stock of spares, and that all their spares had previously been upgraded with the Code 62 spring package.]

Then there's the final two paragraphs of the report:

"All of the piping was removed from the pump and motor. All of the piping showed corrosion. The piping and flanges internal of the pump had the most severe corrosion. Wall thickness in some of the areas was down to zero. The flanges were severely corroded with the heads of some of the flange bolts completely corroded away.

The severe corrosion seen on the piping internal of the pump should be cause for concern in the remaining pumps at this site. Leaks that were imminent on these pumps are sure to be imminent on the remaining."

One does not have to be an engineer to grasp the meaning of what Conhagen wrote there. In fact, they are even understating the matter, since they note that hundreds of gallons of oil had already leaked, so the corrosion failures were no longer imminent - they were existent. Hydraulic oil that was supposed to be going to the motor to turn the pump impeller was going straight in the water.

Pump 5E was part of the original order of 34 pumps. Pump 7E went in shortly after the original order as part of the Phase 2 installation. After periodic dunkings in 2006, both had been in the water continuously since about March or April of 2007. They, along with the rest of the original 34 and the later six at 17th St, spent most of the fall and winter of 2006-07 in the shop getting new Rineer springs and having piping extensions installed.

So under the most generous interpretation, the corrosion clock started ticking in about April of 2007, with the pumps having the same paint as originally specified. By June of 2009, one or both of the pumps' internals had completely corroded, causing catastrophic failure and an inability to drain water from the city during a storm event when the gates were closed.

Reading about it is one thing. Seeing the pictures is another. For comparison purposes, let's look at the pumps before they were installed. These pictures were taken in the spring of 2006:


and then just to the left of those:


Let's zoom into the pump on the left:


And then zoom in further for a closer look at the Rineer motor:


"HP" means high pressure, "LP" means low pressure. All the piping is carbon steel. The case drain line transports small amounts of oil away from the motor. Keep in mind these photos were in 2006. All the hydraulic pumps went into the shop in late 2006 and early 2007 for refits on the Rineer motors and addition of piping extensions to the points where the oil lines go through the pump housing. The paint system used for those refits was identical to the original system applied during manufacture in early 2006.

Here's pictures of either 5E or 7E at 17th Street when it was pulled in July 2009:


To make comparisons with the pictures above easier, I've labeled the pipes:


Here's a section of pipe removed from the pump sitting on the table at Conhagen (the fitting at the bottom indicates it may be from the inlet or outlet of one of the hydraulic coolers)


It appears that a large chunk of the pipe is completely gone in this photo. Also note the rusty hose fitting on the table:


Damage like that is the result of two things: 1) poor initial design related to corrosion protection and painting and 2) an utter lack of preventative maintenance. It is inconceivable that a properly specified and maintained piece of equipment - especially one required for life and safety like these pumps - could have a hand-sized hole corrode away before someone responsible did something. Inconceivable for anyone but the Corps New Orleans District.

The report mentions rust inside the Rineer motor, requiring its replacement. Besides the rust on the pipes causing holes, it's also likely that a failed, rusty seal on the bottom of the motor might have also contributed:


There was marine growth all over the things. Here's one of the oil coolers mounted to the sides of the pumps.


The still-hot hydraulic oil passes through these after leaving the Rineer motor but before returning to the reservoir on the engine skid. The residual heat is supposed to be transferred to the canal water. How much heat could really be transferred with all that fouling?

Here's some of the piping installed over the winter of 2006-07, specifically the return piping (two larger lines) and the smaller case drain line:


Is it any wonder the lines started corroding?

The same lines, with a bit more of the pump housing:


It's a wonder there's not giant holes in the sides of the pump, rather than just the pipes!

One doesn't need to be a genius to look at these pictures - and others I haven't highlighted - in the Conhagen report and wonder, "If this is what just one or two of the pumps looked like after just two years, what about the rest of those pumps that went in the water at exactly the same time and saw exactly the same conditions? Shouldn't they have gotten yanked out too, and right quick?" After all, much of the damage is simply not visible by removing an inspection hatch and looking down into the pump for oil leaks. For example, the Rineer motor corrosion on pump 5E was internal to the motor. The only way to see it was to pull the entire water pump, cart the pump to a shop on a flatbed truck, and cut the piping leading to the Rineer because the bolts holding the piping to the motor had rusted to nothing. Then the motor itself had to be cracked open and inspected.

Well, the Corps did none of that. They did the repair work on water pumps 5E, 7E and the other two pumps - 8W and 9W - laid out in Healtheon task order #3, and then stopped. The hopelessly corroded carbon steel pipe sections were removed and replaced with stainless steel (what should have gone in originally). 5E and 7E went back in the water in early September and underwent some cursory on-site performance testing. The other two pumps went through the same repair process during September (oddly there's no QRI task order for spill cleanup during the removal of those two pumps), finally getting back in the canal in early October.

According to publicly available contracting data for 2009, the work on those four 17th Street pumps was the last repair work done on any of the hydraulic pump systems for the 2009 hurricane season. Despite having a report from their own contractor warning them that all the other water pumps were imminently close to failure, the Corps New Orleans District (yes, the local Corps office) apparently did nothing additional for the entire 2009 hurricane season to address the situation. And of course, they never informed the public about any of this, despite a series of public meetings and presentations about the outfall canals.

Take a look at those pictures above, which show the damage after just over two years immersed in the canals. Imagine what another year in the water has done to the pumps. How does that make you feel? How does that inaction reflect on the local leadership and decisionmakers of the New Orleans District?

So what do we have here? We've got the Corps knowing that hydraulic water pumps are rusting to bits and doing practically nothing about it for the whole 2009 storm season. We've got oil pouring into the canals through those rusty bits, and no evidence of anyone reporting it to the federal government. We've got the Corps refusing to turn the rusty pumps on during a big storm in December, despite water depths in not one but two of the canals exceeding the Corps' own criteria for activation (more on that one later).

And finally, we've got the Corps embarking on what can only be called a crash repair program to belatedly fix the problem, but not telling anyone about it despite numerous contemporaneous public meetings and interviews.

As I said at the beginning of this post, for the last couple of months the Corps has been yanking nearly every hydraulic pump out of the 17th Street and London Avenue sites and sending them out for corrosion-related overhauls. The first task order of the year - number 4 on the Healtheon contract - was issued February 1, 2010 and is valued at $238,846.95. It is for the repair of 17th Street Phase 1 pumps W5 and W6. The scope of repairs for those two pumps is more extensive than for anything done during 2009. Not only was all the interior and exterior carbon steel piping to be replaced with stainless steel, but also both external oil coolers on each pump were to be completely swapped out, switching out carbon steel for stainless steel. When one considers that other replacements include seals, bearings, Rineer motors, gland packing plates, hoses and fittings, as well as an estimated 24 man-hours of weld repairs on each pump, it's easy to conclude that there is almost nothing usable left on these pumps after a little over 2 years in the water.

The Corps is in such a hurry that they are pulling out more than two at a time at 17th Street. I've had a FOIA request in for that information for nearly two months, but it has not been fulfilled in full yet. I got task order number 4, but they still have not transmitted task orders covering the numerous other pumps that have gotten yanked this spring. Despite that, I'll have more on that work in an upcoming post.

[Update, 6/12/10: I wrote about the rest of this spring's work in "This year's scramble" on June 3. The Corps transmitted contract information for the other pumps pulled out this spring on June 11. I posted about it in my June 11 post, "Worse than previously known". Despite the work this spring, the vast majority of the large hydraulic pumps remain corroding and unrepaired today.]

But that's enough for now. I'm going to have much more on this story over the coming days, because it has a lot of tentacles. Next up is how the Corps got into this mess. Stay tuned...

[Postscript: The Corps closed out task order #3 on the first Healtheon contract in September, 2010 with modification 2. They reconciled the Healtheon/Conhagen invoices and subtracted $20,005.63, meaning the total cost of rebuild for the four 17th Street 60" pumps was $385,591.32]

How much is left in the till? Part 2

Today, the Corps issued their long-awaited solicitation for the permanent pump stations at the lakefront. It can be found here. I've been looking it over.

On page 11 of the main solicitation (there is a solicitaiton document and a more technical summary of work) can be found this statement:

"The Government’s contract budget for the design and construction of the project is $650,000,000.00."

That's not simply a recommendation to bidders. The next sentence in the solicitation reads,

"Offers that exceed the contract budget will be eliminated from the competition without further consideration."

Congress appropriated $804 million for the project. So what explains the $154 million gap?

1) A somewhat benign - if benighted explanation

The summary of work notes that demolition of the current Interim Closure Structures will be accomplished under a separate contract. So that's a few million.

Also, we know they have been using the money for the permanent stations to maintain the existing interim stations. Permanent pumps project manager Dan Bradley said at the October 15, 2009 Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East meeting:

"Last year the maintenance cost [for the existing interim closure structures and pumps] was approximately $5 million. The cost of maintenance could increase each year and these costs are coming out of the project funds."

If we (generously) accept Mr. Bradley's number for the expected lifetime of the interim stations (nine years from 2006 to 2014), that would account for $45 million for maintenance.

Also, the Corps has been paying Black & Veatch, ECM, GEC and other engineering firms to consult on the project for years. That's about $2 million lots and lots of millions (I still have to get a final tally, but that's a good rough estimate based on the B&V purchasing documents I have received through FOIA requests).

That still leaves a gap of about $100 million between the appropriation and the known and budgeted expenses on the project.

$100 million just happens to be the amount the Corps wants to spend reinforcing (that is, modifying) the walls along the outfall canals, according to this March 1, 2010 article in the Times-Picayune. The lede:

"The Army Corps of Engineers plans to drive steel sheet piling about 60 feet into the ground along parts of the London Avenue Canal's eastern floodwall -- three to four times deeper than those that catastrophically failed during Hurricane Katrina -- in hopes of significantly increasing the volume of water that the canal can hold.

The project is part of a corps initiative, expected to cost more than $100 million, to raise the "safe water" levels in the London and 17th Street canals by repairing and improving some deficiencies. The money also will go to close a floodwall gap in the more robust Orleans Avenue Canal, which didn't breach in Katrina and already enjoys a higher capacity than the weaker channels."

The numbers sure work out nicely, except for one thing.

The Corps made their (tragically sucessful) argument against lining the canals under Option 2 by saying, in part, that the language of the permanent pump appropriation didn't really mean what it said. That language directs the Corps to

"modify the 17th Street, Orleans Avenue, and London Avenue drainage canals and install pumps and closure structures at or near the lakefront."

The Corps claimed that driving sheet pile cutoffs and lining the canals with concrete (i.e. Option 2) was not a modification, but an entirely different project, and thus not covered under the Congressional language. However, this work they are actually planning to do along the outfall canals (driving sheet piling cutoffs in selected weak spots) would seem to be a substantial modification. And - if they truly are taking the money for that new effort from the funds for the permanent stations - then they have completely undermined their own argument, which was the thrust of my earlier post on this topic. That is, how can driving sheet piling along all the canals not be "modifying" the canals, but putting it in selected spots is?

2) A much more ugly, but simpler, explanation

a) the money for the new sheet piles and other outfall canal work is coming from somewhere other than the permanent pump station appropriation.

b) The Corps blew a huge chunk - $100 million? - of the permanent pump station money on the interim closure structures, which is clearly not allowed under the language of the appropriation. That would be very, very bad.

This is a question that must be answered either way.

Rusty

Start here

The gates are too short

POST UPDATED 8/25/12 - SEE BELOW

You are reading that right. The gates are too short.

I'm referring to the three outfall canal gate structures that the Corps built in 2006 and 2007. When the gates drop, their tops are 16 feet above the lake. That matches the top of the adjacent protection in Orleans Parish.

However, that does not meet the Corps' own design guidelines, which have been in effect since October 2007. From page 23 of chapter 1 of the Corps' Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System Design Guidelines:

"Structural superiority is incorporated in the design elevation for those structures that would be very difficult to rebuild, if damaged, because of disruption in services. Examples are major highway and railroad gates that require detours, pumping station fronting protection that requires reductions to pumping capacity, sector gated structures, etc. These structures are to be constructed to the 2057 levels plus 2 ft. for structural superiority."

And then on page 3 of chapter 5:

"Structural Superiority – All new structures that are difficult to construct due to their nature, such as railroad and highway gates, pump station fronting protection, sector gates, utility crossings, etc., shall have a minimum 2 ft. overbuild."

The Corps is incorporating structural stability into all its major flood protection structures, like the IHNC-Lake Borge surge barrier, the West Closure Complex, and the Bayou Dupre gate in St Bernard Parish. In fact, Karen Durham-Aguilera crowed about it at the November 5, 2009 City Council hearing (at 2:09:09) when describing additional factors on top of the Corps' 100-year design heights:

"We project subsidence out over 50 years, we add numerous factors of safety so that we add more for that. We add more for what we call structural superiority if it's a hardened structure that we would have to rebuild that it would be too hard to add on to."

Most obviously and relvantly, the extra two feet show up in the proposed design criteria for the new permanent pump stations which will replace the current gates and pumps. On pages 9, 10, 15, 21, and 48 of those criteria, the height of the gates at all three future stations is required to be a minimum of 18 feet, or two feet higher than the current gates. Here's the reference on page 15:


On page 48, a full explanation is given, explicitly citing the structural superiority requirement:

"5.5.9 Structural Superiority
Any PPS [Permanent Pump Station] facilities, structures, civil works, or other components that form a structural portion of the storm surge barrier, or that will be located in areas subject to direct storm surge, shall include structural superiority design features as described below. Structural superiority is required to enhance the ability of the structure to survive potential overtopping events. Structural superiority refers to adding structure height to prevent overtopping of structures.

Structural superiority shall be included as follows:
1. Where structural superiority is required, tops of structures shall be a minimum of two (2) feet above the design grade of the adjacent levees/floodwalls. For this project, minimum structural superiority elevation shall be 18.0 feet."

So despite knowing
a) that the future gates will be 18 feet off the water,
b) what the current flooding threat is, and that it requires gates taller than 16 feet, and
c) that the current gates are 16 feet,

the Corps has not done anything to address this increase in risk. That is, they haven't moved to add two feet to the top of the current gates to protect the city in the intervening years before the permanent pump stations are built. Keep in mind the current gates are scheduled to be in service for at least four more hurricane seasons, and all that time the Corps apparently believes having gates that are too short is okay.

The Corps even knows that 18 feet probably isn't enough for the 100 year criteria. Earlier in the document, they call out the 100 year "still water elevation," (i.e. the surge without waves) in the lake as 10.2 feet. Then they call out the lake wave run up on vertical walls (how much above the still water level waves will wash) as 9 feet. Thus, they are expecting a 100 year storm (which roughly corresponds to a category 2 or 3) to have water go over even an 18 foot wall. Imagine what happens on the other side of a 16 foot one.

The scary thing is that when the gates were in the design phase, they were actually going to be two feet shorter than they are now. Take a look at this early design sketch of the 17th Street closure structure (likely from late 2005), taken from a 2007 presentation given by the design engineers on the closure strucutres, URS and Linfield, Hunter, and Junius:

That drawing shows the gates as topping out at only 14 feet. Scary.

Also, this is not simply an academic difference. There is a reason more height is required at structures like these gates. In this case, they need to protect the actual guts that make the gates work. The extra height would also help protect the equipment that locks the gates in place during a storm. Two extra feet would go a long way toward that protection.

But even without that extra two feet, there are robust systems in place to make sure the gates are protecting the city properly during a storm, right? I mean, surely those locking mechanisms are always operated correctly, right? It's not like the Corps would simply leave the gates unsecured and violate their own procedures, would they?

Um, yes, they would. More on that coming up...

Update - 8/25/12

The Corps is actually planning on following this same strategy - i.e. violating their own guidelines by installing gates that are too short - with the permanent pump stations, as reported in the Times Picayune on May 14, 2012. At the very end of an article about the restarting of the bid process on the permanent stations after the first bids were thrown out as a result of successful protests, there's this mention of changes in the bid specifications:

"Three separate investigations by corps officials found no impermissible conflict of interest created by CBY's hiring of Richmond Kendrick, the former corps official. But the GAO found the other complaints were valid, and in October 2011, the corps decided to request the five finalists to respond to a proposal changed to reflect the GAO's recommendations. The changes included language that now says only that proposals over $700 million would not be accepted.


Also removed was a request to minimize impact of construction on the Coconut Beach volleyball complex, which had been located within the footprint of the proposed 17th Street Canal station. The complex is moving to Kenner's Laketown area.

Several other design changes, including reducing the required height of surge protection to 16 feet above sea level, from 18 feet, were included.

The corps' decision to reopen the bid process prompted CBY to file suit."

There's only one reason to do this: cost.

Poundfoolish, Part 1

Update - 12-9-09
Video of the December 9, 2009 City Council committee meeting is available here

[Update - 12-8-09
The Corps' appearance has been moved to Wednesday, December 9th, at 2 PM CST as part of a joint Recovery/Public Works City Council Committee meeting. The Corps is the only item on the agenda here. The meeting will be streamed on the City Council's website here.]

[NOTE: The Corps will be appearing before the New Orleans City Council on December 7 to speak about their $90 million work on the outfall canal walls, which is supposedly not actual modification. They will also be asked about the over half billion dollar property tax increase Option 1 drops on New Orleans over the next 50 years.

The press release is here. The agenda is here. Live video will be available here on the day of the meeting.]

At the November 19, 2009 meeting in which Colonel Sinkler revealed the Corps is planning on spending $90 million modifying the outfall canal walls and levees (despite their staunch adherence to the "we're not authorized to modify the canals" talking point), the Corps released part of the Phase One Request for Proposals for the permanent pump stations. It is a scope of work, with design criteria. The Corps' consultants, Black & Veatch, refer to it as a "Statement of Work." I'm going to call it a Scope of Work, which is the more common term.

Releasing this sort of thing for comment is not unusual, despite how the Corps might portray it. The difference is allowing the public to see it. Usually it is public agencies and contractors that get a sneak peek before it is officially issued. This particular document has been floating around behind the scenes since about March of this year. Note that the revisions (in the lower corner of each page) are already at "K," meaning this is at least the 11th version of this document.

As with many documents the Corps releases, parts are missing. At least three appendices ("A" through "C") are not included. Also, this document represents but a small sliver of the overall RFP. Among the things missing are drawings, other technical specifications and all the commercial terms, which together would likely dwarf the 82 pages released to the public by a factor of five.

Overall, I would call the document "choppy." You have to look in multiple places for some things, and there's a lot of vagueness where there should be certainty.

I thought I would go through the features I reviewed in the earlier "Pennywise" posts (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4) and see how the Corps/Black & Veatch is specifying them. I've rejiggered the list a little, but the links still point to the correct posts.

1) Formed Suction Intake
2) Includes Floodwall/Levee Upgrades
3) Includes Gated Bypass
4) Canal Transitions
5) Deepened Sill
6) All Electric Pumps
7) Pump Station Sized for Future Pump Capacity
8) Pump Capacity Sized for Future Pump Capacity
9) Fuel Storage and Generator Sized for Future Capacity
10) Includes Siphon Recovery
11) Includes Breakwater
12) Stilling Basin at Discharge
13) Removal of ICS Facilities

Formed Suction Intakes, Spare Pumping Capacity, and Taxes

The area around the pump inlets is the best example of how Corps cost cutting gets out of control, and actually harms projects.

I wrote quite a bit about pump inlets in Pennywise, Part 2. To review, the Corps does not wish to install Formed Suction Inlets (FSI's) on the inlets of the Option 1 pumps, even though they would save costs in the future and make eminent sense to put in now. They wish to simply leave the pump inlets bare, similar to a straw in a drink. Formed Suction Inlets will be required in Option 2, when the canals are deepened. That is because they are the only inlet design (according to the Corps) that can handle the shallower depths of water that will come with the deeper Option 2 canals.

The Corps installed FSI's on the direct drives at 17th Street and London Avenue in 2007. They provided a graphic in the February 21, 2007 Task Force Hope Update:


The newly released Scope of Work codifies the Corps' twisted reasoning, but provides an even more dangerous dimension to the problem.

Here's the relevant verbiage on pump inlets (ironically found in the section of the Scope dealing with adaptable features):

"PPS [Permanent Pumping Station] pumping station inlet, intake area, and gate structure [shall be] designed to accommodate Possible Future Condition pumps without structural modifications to the pumping station. Note that addition of formed suction intake (FSI) structures is not considered a structural modification if they can be added without demolition of the initial pumping station structure and if they can be added without requiring a pumping station shutdown. Shut down of an individual pump during modifications is permitted."

Taken in isolation, this statement might seem reasonable. But one needs to also consider that the Corps does not plan on including any spare pumping capacity beyond the bare minimum required to match the existing pump stations' flowrates (based on current flows at all three canals and future S&WB expansions at 17th Street and London Avenue). So without any spare pumping capacity, how exactly would a future pump-by-pump shutdown impact the ability of the Sewerage & Water Board to drain water from the city during a storm event? It would harm it, severely.

This is horrible, cut-costs-to-the-bone engineering that USACE seems to specialize in. It's bad enough they are:

- cheaping out on a component they are already designing for elsewhere (another paragraph on the same page as the passage above calls for the inlet channel to allow water flow velocities suitable for FSI's),
- moving those FSI fabrication and installation costs to Option 2 to make their Option 1 budget look better,

But to top it all off, they are hamstringing the future operations of the lakefront stations - and adding risk to the citizens of the city - while Option 2 is under construction.

And in the final analysis, they are likely putting in a technically inferior pump inlet which causes more vortices and will shorten the life of the pumps in the long term.

Spare Capacity - not so much
And just to go back to the point about no spare capacity, because I don't want to bury a lede. The Corps has always, public statements notwithstanding, intended to do the bare minimum on these stations. Their constant delays, the lack of attention, and the raiding of funds all point to how low a priority the pump stations are on their scale. But to now have their skimping then place the citizens at risk in the future is inexcusable.

The Corps plans (apparently) on installing pumps with peak flowrates of:

17th Street: 12,500 cubic feet per second (cfs)
Orleans Avenue: 2700 cfs
London Avenue: 9000 cfs

The 17th Street flowrate is based on a current flow of 10,500 cfs and a long-planned 2000 cfs expansion by the Sewerage & Water Board. The London Avenue flowrate is based on a current flow of 8000 cfs and a future S&WB expansion of 1000 cfs. So while there might be spare pumps at 17th and London initially, when the S&WB goes to expand their stations on those canals, the spare capacity at the lakefront stations will disappear, because of decisions being made now.

The flowrate at Orleans is based on the current flow. Oddly, the Corps doesn't seem to be considering future expansions at Orleans, even though the Sewerage & Water Board is. So any capacity increase along Orleans Avenue will be completely foreclosed by the Corps' plans on that canal.

It is foolhardy not to design in spare pumps, but that is what the Corps is doing.

Taxes
And one last point: now that we finally have in print exactly what the design flows are for the new stations, we can calculate the exact amount of extra property tax burden the City of New Orleans will incur. That's because the Corps will not be running these new stations, the Sewerage & Water Board will. And the Sewerage & Water Board gets its revenue for drainage operations from property tax millages.

The going rate for annual Operations and Maintenance of the S&WB drainage pumps is $500,000 per 1000 cfs of flow. The total proposed peak flow of all three lakefront stations is 24,200 cfs.

Thus the annual additional tax burden on New Orleans's propertyholders will be $12.1 million. Spread out over the theoretical 50 year lifespan of the stations, that is $605 million.

Along with so many other things, that is a true cost of Option 1 when compared to Option 2. That cost would not exist with Option 2, because Option 2 replaces the existing pumping stations, rather than simply duplicating them out at the lakefront.

Heads up

[Update - 12-8-09
The Corps' appearance has been moved to Wednesday, December 9th, at 2 PM CST as part of a joint Recovery/Public Works City Council Committee meeting. The Corps is the only item on the agenda here. The meeting will be streamed on the City Council's website here.]

The Corps wil be appearing before the New Orleans City Council on December 7 to speak about their $90 million work on the outfall canal walls, which is supposedly not actual modification. They will also be asked about the $500 million property tax increase Option 1 drops on New Orleans over the next 50 years.

Agenda is here. Live video will be available here on the day of the meeting.

Update 12-8-09
Media coverage from this brief appearance can be found at WWL-TV's site here, and Fox 8's site here (Fox 8 video here). The entire raw video of the appearance is at the City Council's website here.

How much is left in the till?

With this statement from project manager Dan Bradley at the October 15, 2009 Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East meeting:

"Last year the maintenance cost [for the existing interim closure structures and pumps] was approximately $5 million. The cost of maintenance could increase each year and these costs are coming out of the project funds."

along with the knowledge that millions of additional dollars dollars have been spent on engineering over the past few years (those Black & Veatch reports don't come free, you know), a question has to be asked.

How much of the $802 million appropriated to the permanent pump project is left? Because it's not just maintenance and engineering that has caused the total to drop. Those amounts are possibly peanuts.

According to publicly available contract data, the Corps spent just over $400 million in building the interim closure structures. According to the January 2006 Project Information Report, which laid out the original scheme for the interim closure structures, the Corps originally budgeted around $141 million for the three structures and the original order of 34 hydraulic pumps (including 30% contingency on the construction constracts and then an additional 10% Engineering & Design, and 10% Supervision and Administration on top of all four). Here's the cost estimates from the January 2006 PIR:



Assuming the $141 million came out of the pots for immediate post-Katrina repairs (found in the 3rd Katrina Supplemental), which is a large assumption, where did the other $259 million come from? Somehow, the Corps had to pay for the procurement and installation of 19 direct drive pumps at 17th Street and London Avenue in 2007, along with a SCADA control system not originally budgeted.

One has to ask, did that $259 million - or more - come out of the permanent pump station project appropriation?

The Corps' invented crisis

The Corps arguments against Option 2 boil down to three contentions:

1) They are not authorized by Congress to build Option 2.

2) They haven't been given enough money to do so, according to their own estimates.

3) They don't have enough time to build Option 2 before the current interim closure structures self-destruct, or something.

Rebutting each of these:

1) Authorization: Over the past few weeks, it has emerged that the Corps is planning to do work identical to Option 2 at weak spots along the canals. They have budgeted at least $90 million for the work and plan on it lasting for years. Obviously, they are authorized to do modifications to the canals.

2) They goosed the Option 2 estimate between 2006 and 2008 by at least $1 billion more for less work on the pump stations. They also shifted a bunch of features from Option 1 to Option 2 in those estimates, to make the numbers look better for Option 1 and worse for Option 2. Their claims of expense cannot be taken at face value.

Which brings us to the "hurry up" reason, which is the most odious of their arguments.

I've detailed in the past how they've used this distortion to scare the public and their representatives. Karen Durham-Aguilera trotted it out - unsolicited no less - at the November 5, 2009 City Council meeting, paired with a rewriting of history (move the slider bar on the video to about 2:19:33):

"The thing that we're all remembering - especially from the engineers' point of view - the outfall canals, closure gates, and pump stations are temporary structures. You know, our mission was to get those in place before another hurricane season, and that is what we we did, and they were out there by June, 2006. They were never made to be long term. They are exposed in the elements. They are subject to corrosion. So our job is to get those replaced as quickly as possible. And even if we start today, it's going to be spring of 2014 before we're done because it's a very complicated construction project. So that's why we're so driven to keep moving forward, so that we're doing everything we can to not have a gap in risk reduction for the citizens of greater New Orleans."

Okay, first off, does she seriously think the entire New Orleans metro area has amnesia? We're not stupid. The gates and pumps were NOT "out there" by June, 2006. Here's the Times-Picayune on June 1, 2006, in an article titled "Pumps won't hit '06 goal this summer:"

"It won't be possible to provide the maximum promised pumping capacity at the new floodgates on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals during what are usually the most active months of hurricane season this year, and perhaps not until the start of the 2007 season, Army Corps of Engineers officials confirmed Wednesday.

They said the magnitude and complexity of installing the gates, which requires configuring as many as 28 separate pumps, platforms and diesel engines, makes it impossible to provide the 6,000 cubic feet per second of drainage capacity that corps officials had been working to have ready in September.

The soonest that level may be attainable is Oct. 31. All corps officials can guarantee this year is 2,400 to 2,800 cubic feet per second of drainage capacity using auxiliary pumps now being installed adjacent to each structure. They will try to use portable pumps to add 1,000 cfs."

But the Corps rewriting history is not new. However, you'd think they would bother to look at their own contemporaneous newsletters, which make clear construction was continuing on the gates and pumps throughout the 2006 hurricane season. The June 12, 2006 newsletter even says this:"The company selected to manufacture these pumps to the required specifications within the specified time, delivered pumps that are not working to required specifications."

But that is only tangential to this post. The real emphasis is on Ms. Durham-Aguilera's repetition of the Corps' threat:

We're doing everything we can to not have a gap in risk reduction for the citizens of greater New Orleans."

The Corps claims the interim closure structures have between 5 and 7 usable years of life. They also claim that Option 2 would take until 2023 to build, thus their claim of a "gap," as if they are powerless.

Getting them pinned down on where they got the 5-7 year number is not easy. Combing through their public statements seems to evince two excuses: a) The above mentioned corrosion excuse and b) a limited lifespan on the much-investigated MWI hydraulic pumps. I'll tackle the pump one first.

Corps excuse #1 - the hydraulic pumps have limited lifetime
As to the first excuse, project manager Dan Bradley let slip that the 5-7 year number, whatever its origin, doesn't have a basis in reality last month.

During a presentation to the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East on October 15, 2009 (the same day as his boss, President Obama, was in town), Bradley let this gem out:

"Mr. Estopinal commented that it was stated in the reports he read that the projected life span of the temporary pumps is about 5 1/2 years and 50,000 operating hours. He asked for a clarification of the life span. Mr. Bradley responded that the 50,000 operating hours had to do with the life span of a gear within the pump. Other things, including the gear, govern the life span of the pumps. Therefore, five to seven years was expected to be a reasonable serviceable life. This does not mean that the serviceable life could not be prolonged a few more years with maintenance; however, an increasing amount of money would have to be put into the system."

Oops! I thought everything would fall apart if they didn't start the Option 1 bid process right now! Turns out, when it comes to the MWI pumps, it's just a matter of cash.

How much cash, you ask? Assuming $5 million in maintenance a year for all three closures, and excluding the flowrates from the direct-drive, non-hydraulic pumps (about 40%), leaves about $3 million a year to maintain the hydraulic pumps. Multiplied by the extra amount of time the Corps estimates Option 2 would take over Option 1 (9 years), that's an additional $27 million in maintenance on the existing hydraulic pumps. Not an insubstantial sum, but also not huge either. Plus, there are opportunites for savings in current maintenance expenses. For example, by the time 2013 rolls around, the Corps will have spent over $1.5 million to rent three used cranes (they act as backup to the hydraulic winches on the gates), when they could have simply purchased them for a fraction of the price.

By the by, Mr. Bradley is - ahem - bending the truth when he refers to the 50,000 hour lifespan of "a gear within the pump." The 50,000 hour figure actually was referring to the specified lifetime of bearings within the MWI pump units. Now, there are definitely difficulties with the gearboxes on the MWI pumps, which were substantially detailed in the OSC report (Part 1, Part 2) from earlier this year - specifically that the gearboxes are undersized for their service according to their manufacturer's published catalog data. However, that's not what Bradley was saying. He - like many the Corps sends out to talk to government representatives - relies on his audience not knowing the minutae of the subject at hand.

Corps excuse #2 - corrosion of the interim closure structure will limit their lifetime
As Ms. Durham-Aguilera mentioned, the Corps also has a talking point that corrosion is a problem. Their message discipline was on display in Bradley's comments about the topic to the October 15th, 2009 SLFPA-E meeting, which sound almost identical to Durham-Aguilera's on November 5, 2009. First, Bradley's statements:

"Mr. Barry asked that Mr. Bradley detail the situation concerning the interim structures, since much of the pressure is due to the condition of those structures. Mr. Bradley explained that after Hurricane Katrina the USACE was in a hurry to get closure structures in place in the outfall canals before the 2006 hurricane season. The architects/engineers (A/E) were rapidly attempting to get the structures in place knowing at that time that the permanent pump stations would be three to five years down the line. Much of the structuring was not actually coated and is exposed steel. Therefore, many of the problems are due to corrosion. Last year the maintenance cost was approximately $5 million. The cost of maintenance could increase each year and these costs are coming out of the project funds."

And Durham-Aguilera on November 5:

"The thing that we're all remembering - especially from the engineers' point of view - the outfall canals, closure gates, and pump stations are temporary structures. You know, our mission was to get those in place before another hurricane season, and that is what we we did, and they were out there by June, 2006. They were never made to be long term. They are exposed in the elements. They are subject to corrosion. So our job is to get those replaced as quickly as possible. And even if we start today, it's going to be spring of 2014 before we're done because it's a very complicated construction project. So that's why we're so driven to keep moving forward, so that we're doing everything we can to not have a gap in risk reduction for the citizens of greater New Orleans."

So they claim that due to the interim closure structures' exposure to the weather, they won't last more than a few years, with the implication that there's nothing that can be done about it. That's not true.

They are attempting to make the corrosion argument using this Black & Veatch internal report (released in April of this year, but substantially prepared in mid-2007) on how to make the ICS's last for 25 to 50 years with adequate maintenance. Nowhere within its text does it say the structures are vulnerable to failure within 5 to 7 years due to corrosion.

The only time that a definitive lifespan on the closure structures is mentioned in relation to corrosion is this:

"The equations determining the allowable corrosion (sacrificial steel) at any point in the nonoverflow structure sheet piling indicate there is a large safety factor in the cofferdam design. About 0.25 inches (250 mils) of corrosion can be tolerated without catastrophic results. Based on the average (4.5 mils/year) and maximum (9.0 mils/year) submerged zone corrosion rates given in Appendix C Table 1.4-1, the estimated service life of the non-overflow structure is in the range of 28 to 55 years."

The "non-overflow" structures are those sheetpile-enclosed masses on either sides of the gate structures themselves:



The report points to corrosion as a one problem among many with the interim closure strucutres, and suggests a number of remedies to allow the structures to be used for 50 years. Some of those remedies have already been implemented, such as sandblasting and painting of all the exposed piping on the sites.

Other remedies are pretty common sense - coating exposed steel sheet pile with coal tar epoxy for example. The Corps already calls for this in every specification it sends out for driving sheet pile which will have exposed length above ground. The report also calls for implementation of cathodic protection as well as covering other exposed surfaces with appropriate coatings.

Fortunately, this report includes all the detailed cost estimates for this work. Care to hazard a guess at what the Corps is refusing to spend on corrosion protection for the current structures to make them suitable for 50 years of service? The princely sum of $9,163,500.

And don't forget: the Corps has already spent $1,972,867 to Creek Services, LLC out of Gretna on contract W912P8-09-C-0001 (aka W912P8-08-C-0108) to do a large chunk of this work - painting the pipes. So the actual sum is approxmately,

$7,190,633

So basically the Corps is threatening the public with the near-imminent demise of the interim closure structures due to corrosion because they are unwilling to spend a little over $7 million on corrosion protection which could last 50 years. For comparison, the Corps New Orleans District has a public relations contract worth well over $5 million with Outreach Process Partners.

$7.2 million is about 0.9% of the $802 million already appropriated to the permanent pump stations, or $3 million less than the $10 million the Corps wants the property taxpayers of New Orleans to pay every year for forcing Option 1 on them instead of taking the time to do Option 2 (see my earlier post "The story so far"on the tax implications of Option 1).

Oops, again.

The Corps cheaps out - again

So, in sum, the Corps is threatening the New Orleans area with failure of their interim closure structures - a violation of Congressional direction to provide 100 year protection - if they don't build something - the technically inferior Option 1 - before then. In fact, there is no imminent threat. The Corps already has admitted and has had consultants tell them in detail what is needed to prolong the lives of the ICS's for as long as they need to. At the most, doing so until Option 2 is complete would cost about $27 million in hydraulic pump maintenance and $7 million in corrosion protection, a fairly minor sum in the midst of the Corps' $14.3 billion appropriation from Congress. By comparison, if Option 1 is built by 2014 instead of constructing Option 2 by 2023, the citizens of New Orleans would pay an extra $90 million in increased property taxes over those 9 years the Corps refuses to do their job.

Essentially, the Corps is saying citizens should pay $90 million out of their own pockets for an inferior system rather than the Corps paying $34 million out of appropriations they already have, and then going back to Congress to refill the pot.

And that is what this all comes down to - money, and the Corps' apparent embarrassment in having to ask for more of it. There is no imminent danger of a "gap in risk reduction" from the reasons the Corps has given (not that there aren't other good reasons to get the ICS's out of there, but the Corps will never admit to them because it would be tremendously embarrassing).

We know they are short on money for armoring, for mitigation, for the West Closure Complex, and for Option 2. We also know they're skimping on Option 1 stations. The bill is coming due within the next year, so they just need to man up and ask for what they need to give the citizens of the New Orleans area and this country what they promised. And they need to stop lying.

Corps pants a raging inferno

At the November 19, 2009 Corps public meeting held to take input from the public on the shape of the bid documents for the permanent pump station project, the following mind-numbing bombshell was dropped by the Corps' Colonel Bob Sinkler, head of the Hurricane Protection Office (from coverage by the Times-Picayune):

"Col. Robert Sinkler, commander of the Hurricane Protection Office, which is overseeing the projects for the corps, said the corps is working on a study to determine which floodwalls along the canals might need to be replaced, and has $90 million set aside to pay for that work. But that work won't be complete until sometime after the June 2011 deadline for construction of the rest of the hurricane risk reduction system, he said."

This is huger than huge.

The Corps has had a program underway for months, if not longer, to band-aid the walls along the canals. We know it has been going since at least May of this year, because that is when the comprehensive resurvey of the 17th Street canal happened. The actual survey records are here and here.

The Corps has claimed for years that language from the 4th Katrina Supplemental did not give them authorization to modify the canal walls. That language - drafted by the Corps - says the Corps is to

"modify the 17th Street, Orleans Avenue, and London Avenue drainage canals and install pumps and closure structures at or near the lakefront..."

They claimed the word "modify" did not apply to the walls along the canals. I believe the head of the Corps, General Van Antwerp Brigadier General Michael Walsh, claimed this in testimony before Congress in June (obviously after the wall repair program was underway):

"Local stakeholders have sought support for Options 2 and 2a which would expand the scope of work to include significant modifications to the three main outfall canals of the City's interior drainage system in addition to the pumping stations that are being built under Option 1. Since Options 2 and 2a address interior rainwater drainage issues and not storm surge protection, both exceed our current authority and would require additional authorization and funding for construction."

It has also shown up repeatedly in Corps propaganda update newsletters and in other testimony to other public bodies, like Colonel Sinkler's presentation to the New Orleans City Council on November 5, 2009.

Now we have it straight from the Corps' mouth that they have set aside nearly $100 million dollars to not only "rehabilitate" or "physically improve" canal walls, they are actually looking at replacing some of them. Under any definition, that is "modify"ing the canals.

The public acknowledgement of this band-aid program unleashes a can of worms:

1) It means the Individual Environmental Report #5 (issued at the same time this program was doing the initial survey work) was incomplete, and must be reopened. The Corps' preferred alternative in IER#5 contains no mention of any work getting done along the canal walls. Thus, the public was not fully informed of the Corps' plans - and ONGOING WORK - on the canals and were thus deprived of their legal right to comment in full. This is not a minor problem.

2) It means the Corps has been negotiating in bad faith with the State of Louisiana on a Project Partnership Agreement (PPA) for the permanent pumps, and that any PPA should be placed on hold until the full scope of the Corps' work has been publicly vetted.

3) It means that there is no excuse - other than money - not to proceed with Option 2 at this point. And determining the amount of money clearly needs to be done by an outside party,since the Corps has wildly inflated their Option 2 estimates to attempt to force the public into Option 1.

The Corps has been trying to keep this under wraps until the PPA was signed, since that agreement is the only roadblock to them doing whatever the hell they want. The problem is now clear - they didn't ask for enough money in the 4th, 5th, and 6th Katrina Supplementals. They are short on funds for armoring, mitigation, the West Closure Complex, and Option 2.

They need to man up and go back to Congress and just ask for more cash to finish what they started. All these games meant to keep them looking good are ridiculous, and will eventually harm the public.

The story so far

[Updated after meeting - see bottom of post]

The Corps is planning a round of public meetings to take input on the synopsis and the phase 1 RFP for the permanent pump stations. The first meeting is due to take place November 19, 2009 (details here).

They had previously scheduled such a series, with the first one scheduled for October, but they had cancelled them to gve more time to negotiate the Project Partnership Agreement (PPA) with the state. Now, even with the PPA under negotiation, they are pushing ahead with the first meeting. It is undoubtedly a cheap PR move on their part to tell a room full of citizens that the State is holding up their storm protection - a lie of course.

In advace of that meeting, what do we now know about the Corps' plans for the permanent pump stations? And what is the Corps likely to say?

A quick primer first:

Option 1 installs new pump stations at the lake to replace the current interim closure structures. It leaves the city pump stations, the walls, and the levees along the canals in place.

Option 2 also installs lakefront pump stations, and it removes the city pumping stations and lowers the existing canal bottoms. It also lines the canal bottoms with concrete and effectively turns the canals into gravity drains similar to systems used elsewhere throughout Jefferson and other parts of Orleans Parish. The canal bottoms would be below grade, and the weakened walls - the ones that failed in Katrina and are now prohibited from seeing their maximum design loads by so-called "safe water elevations" - would be removed from seeing water. The Corps' own technical analysis calls Option 2 superior to Option 1.

Naturally, the Corps is pushing ahead with the cheaper, less technically superior Option 1, over the objections of everyone from the citizens up to the State government.

1) The Corps claims everything is paid for with federal dollars

FALSE. While the construction of the new Option 1 pump stations is fully federally funded, operation and maintenance of the future pump stations will likely fall on to the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans, a perenially cash-strapped agency still recovering from Katrina and which already operates four pump stations along the three outfall canals. Drainage operations are funded through property taxes, which have falled precipitously since the storm (the City of New Orleans faces a $67 million deficit this year due in part to a drop in property tax collection).

The standard estimate for the annual cost of operation and maintenance of drainage pumping structures is $500,000 per 1000 cubic feet per second (cfs). The total amount of cfs proposed for the three new pump stations in Option 1 is around 20,000 cfs. That means the S&WB needs to come up with an extra $10 million a year in their drainage budget. According to the 2009 S&WB operating budget, the drainage operating budget is about $27.7 million. And now the Corps want to drop another $10 million in the laps of the taxpayers of New Orleans through Option 1 - which adds three stations but does not subtract any. How exactly is the S&WB supposed to account for a 36% jump in expenses with no corresponding increase in revenues? There's only one way: raise property taxes on citizens.

Option 2 would be tax-neutral, since it replaces the city pumps one-for-one with lakefront pumps. In fact, it might even have a stimulative effect on property taxes, as potential homeowners see a safer, superior system get installed in place of the already-proven-to-fail walls. But the Corps would rather stick with their cheaper Option 1 alternative while they saddle the citizens with a $500 million tax bill over the 50 year design life of the project. That's the dirty little secret of Option 1.

2) The Corps will claim that Congress forced them into Option 1 through the authorization and funding levels in the law, and they only do what Congress tells them.

FALSE. In 2005, it was the Corps that drafted the language that authorized the permanent pump station project, including the amount of funding for it. That language includes the words "modify the 17th Street, Orleans Avenue, and London Avenue drainage canals," and - despite the plain language - the Corps has dictated (and gotten the Office of Management and Budget to buy into) the idea that "modify" does not apply to the entire length of the canal, only the vicinity of the pump stations at the lakefront.

Also, it was the funding amount that was the key to understanding that the Corps CHOSE Option 1. That funding amount was their very early post-Katrina estimate for Option 1, taken from their internal documents. Their estimate for Option 2 only came in $190 million higher, and they could have asked for that amount and crafted ironclad Option 2 language, but they CHOSE not to at the very moment they had a golden opportunity to ask for whatever they wanted. The Corps cheaped out and cheated New Orleans out of the better, safer option. There's lot's more details on this in my September 30, 2009 post, "The fix was in."

3) As a result of (2), the Corps claims they are not authorized to "modify" the entire length of the canals to Option 2 depths.

FALSE, by their own public admission.

Within the last two weeks, three separate Corps officials, including the two most senior officials on the ground in New Orleans, have confirmed the Corps is planning major "rehabilitation" and "physical improvements" to the canal walls which sound just like what would occur under Option 2, short of digging the canals deeper.

In response to a question from the City Council at their November 5, 2009 meeting (video here, slides here), Task Force Hope leader Karen Durham-Aguilera, the civilian program director for the entire Corps effort around New Orleans, said (at about 2:17:38 on the video),

"We've got engineering analyses of those outfall canal walls and those safe water elevations ongoing right now with Sewerage & Water Board and levee authorities. So we're looking to see if we can physically improve those walls further and assure that Sewerage & Water Baord would not have an overtopped system."

A few minutes later, Colonel Bob Sinkler, the head of the Hurricane Protection Office, said (at about 2:23:48 on the video),

"After the Safe Water Elevation studies are complete and after they [the canal walls] are rehabilitated based upon the information we gather from those studies, they will be able to accommodate any needs that the Sewerage & Water Board has to remove rainwater through those canals. And things are well on track to do that. We're working hand in hand with the Sewerage & Water Board to ensure that's the case."

Finally in a report aired on Fox 8 just this week (story here, video here), Corps engineer John Grieshaber gave pertinent details:

"'There are a number of possibilities and they are unique to different situations. Deep soil mixing is one, driving new sheet pile to cut off seepage is another, modification of the internal walls of the canal, and putting relief wells,' Grieshaber said. 'Deep soil mixing is when you actually go into the foundation and you mix cement and form columns which changes the strength of the soil. It makes the soil a lot stronger.'"

Those methods mentioned by Grieshaber - deep soil mixing (DSM), seepage cutoff walls, etc - are all integral to the plans for Option 2 laid out in the key 2009 Black & Veatch "90 Day Study."

That report studied three ways to deepen the canals. Style 1 is shown here:


and is described as,

"This alternative provides support of the existing floodwalls of the canal through a combination of a soldier pile system and DSM. The soldier piles and DSM will provide the support of the existing parallel protection floodwalls during construction, support of the final canal banks and act as the vertical seepage cut-off."

Style 2:

"This alternative provides support of the existing floodwalls of the canal through a combination of soldier pile system and DSM. The DSM will provide the support of the existing parallel protection floodwalls as described in the previous alternative. The soldier piles are extended to the depth of the deep seepage cut-off."

And Style 3:

"This is a trapezoidal canal alternative that incorporates a perimeter deep soil mixing/jet grouting component to control seepage, ground modification to improve slope stability, and grout filled fabric form to form the canal perimeter"

Style 3 is what was used for the Corps' cost estimate in the 2009 Cost Report to Congress:

"The cost estimate includes a trapezoidal shaped canal with deep soil mixing/jet grouting and the grout filled fabric forms bottom and side slopes. This was the least cost of severl methods reviewed"

How exactly are the "rehabilitation" and "physical improvements" the Corps plans on for the existing canals in the near future any different than the actions of Option 2? It certainly appears they are substantially the same, with only the final depth of the canal and placement of a slab on the bottom of the canal providing the difference. Both make substantial changes - modifications - to the canals. If the Corps can make these changes locally at certain spots in the canals, they can do them along their entire lengths.

4) The Corps will claim the bid process has to get underway soon, because the existing gate structures and pumps have a "limited life," and that leaving them there will put citizens at increased risk.

FALSE. This is the most odious veiled threat the Corps puts out there. Do they seriously think citizens believe the Corps is going to allow their gate structures to simply melt away, fall apart, or otherwise disintegrate?

The Corps Dan Bradley - the public face of the permanent pump station project -has already said publicly to the SLFPA-East (the east bank levee authority) on September 17, 2009 they are spending approximately $5 million in maintenance on the three existing interim closure structures:

"Mr. Goins asked about the USACE’s plan for maintaining the Interim Control Structures should there be additional slippage in completing the permanent project. Mr. Bradley replied that the USACE has a good maintenance program in place. The estimated annual cost of the ICS maintenance is approximately $5 million, which increases each year. The maintenance costs are coming out of the project budget."

That last sentence is probably more key than anything - the Corps is not paying for Operations with money from their Operations budget; they are using project funds to do so. I'm not sure if they are statutorily required to do so, or if they could transfer money from elsewhere in their District budget to run the closure structures and save the cash for the purpose it was meant - building new stations.

Anyway, the biggest maintenance concern - corrosion - is already being dealt with on a continuous basis. After years of delay, the Corps sandblasted and painted all the exposed piping on the structures late last year and earlier this year, as documented in updates to my post, "More on pipes ... and rust."

Also, they are engaging in (or have already completed) repairs to some pumps - supposedly due to corrosion. WWL-TV reported on August 4th, 2009 that,

"...some of the pumps at the 17th Street Canal have been pulled out of the site after inspectors discovered problems with six of the hydraulic pumps there...
A routine inspection uncovered major corrosion on six of the pumps. Corps officials said a high salinity content in the water may be to blame...
Because the six pumps are located underwater, the only way to fix them is to bring them onto dry land, effectively taking them out of the pumping system...
The Corps said, during repairs, they are only removing two of the pumps at a time, in order to maintain a 95 percent pumping capacity."

I hope to have more information on these repairs in the near future.

As one can see, they are already engaging in maintenance to keep the system running. The threat that they will choose not to maintain the system at some point, and that they are using such a threat to push public support toward an inferior design, is nose-curling. But it's par for the course for an organization statutorily protected from liability from defects in flood control works.

There's more on the Corps strategy to use threats and intimidation in my post, "Corps to NOLA: Drop Dead (unless we get Option 1)." They have repeated this threat as recently as November 5, 2009, at the New Orleans City Council meeting.

5) The Corps will claim that even though they are forcing Option 1 on people, they are designing the pump stations to be "adaptable," so that any modifications needed for Option 2 will be minimal.

half TRUE, half FALSE. The Corps has committed to built pump stations which have deepened foundations designed to accommodate future deepening of the canals, and they've also committed to put in buildings that are sized to handle the bigger equipment of the future Option 2. Those commitments do not appear anywhere in a legally binding document yet, though, so take them at face value.

More importantly, a number of features which would also make the stations truly adaptable from Option 1 to Option 2 are not currently included in their plans. Those features being left out in order to cut down on the cost of the Option 1 stations include:

a) Pump inlets, such as formed suction inlets, or "FSI's," which do not need changing when the stations are converted
b) Installation of bigger pump drive equipment now, to avoid future higher costs.
c) Installation of adequate generators and fuel storage now for future Option 2 needs, which would avoid future higher costs.
d) A smooth, sloped transition from the current high elevation of the channel bottoms to the deepened pump station foundation. The Corps wants to just put in an abrupt step (called a retaining wall), which will induce turbulence at the pump inlets and increase pump maintenance costs, as well as becoming a place to trap silt.
e) Complete, redundant backflow protection - an obvious need after what happened in Jefferson Parish during Katrina, when their backflow systems failed without operators to attend them.
f) This is the big one - the Corps does not want to include upgrades to the walls along the entire lengths of the canals in this project. See (3) above.

There's lots of detail on these and all the other features of the proposed stations in my four part series, "Pennywise:" Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

6) The Corps claims Option 1 will be just as safe as Option 2

FALSE. Option 1 leaves the existing canals in place forever, with their requirements for maintenance dredging. As I explain in my October 20, 2009 entry, "Silted In," the current canals have silt building up in them at an alarming rate, and will need to be cleaned out soon. The last time the 17th Street canal was dredged, it led to - in part - the wall failure in Katrina. Do we really want clamshell buckets hauling away cubic yards of material from the canal bottoms within feet of these already-weakened canal walls?

So do you still trust the Corps to do the right thing through Option 1? It's something they chose because it's cheaper for them, but more expensive in the long run for the taxpayers. It's inferior from an engineering standpoint, and even what they are proposing doesn't pass the sniff test.

I hope the citizens of New Orleans realize what a raw deal they are getting, and that they let the Corps and their elected representatives know.

Update
From the T-P's coverage of the November 19, 2009 meeting, a bombshell:

"Col. Robert Sinkler, commander of the Hurricane Protection Office, which is overseeing the projects for the corps, said the corps is working on a study to determine which floodwalls along the canals might need to be replaced, and has $90 million set aside to pay for that work. But that work won't be complete until sometime after the June 2011 deadline for construction of the rest of the hurricane risk reduction system, he said."

First off, this appears to be typical Corps good news/bad news - we'll do the right thing, but it's over four years later and it's going to take probably another three to actually do it. And to top it all off, we're going to keep it secret until a public meeting where only a small cross section of the public shows up.

The bombshell part is that this announcement blows the Corps' argument that they are not authorized to proceed wth Option 2 out of the water. They are setting aside nearly $100 million and planning on a multi-year project which could not only repair or shore up walls, but could actually replace them. If that isn't "modifying" the canals, I don't know what is. At this point, the only real thing stopping them is their lack of balls in asking Congress for enough cash for Option 2.

Also, how does Colonel Sinkler get off not telling the New Orleans City Council this huge news at their November 5th meeting, just two weeks ago? The City Council - and government officials at every level - need to get him in front of them and get a full explanation of what the hell is going on, and why vital information like this is being withheld.

One other note, also from the T-P article:

"Marcia St. Martin, director of the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, said the new pump stations will add $10 million a year to the board's annual budget, and that her agency continues to prefer two options that would deepen the drainage canals and remove the interior pump stations."

It's nice to see that number publicly confirmed by the head of the agency who must bear the costs. Hopefully, the public understands the burden Option 1 will be.

Parsing: Corps publicly commits to fix outfall canal walls

[Updated 11/17/09]

I kind of wish the local media more than one representative of the local media had paid close attention to the November 5, 2009 City Council meeting, because they would have heard a rather amazing pair of statements from the Corps' Karen Durham-Aguilera and Colonel Sinkler, heads of Task Force Hope and the Hurricane Protection Office respectively.

The slides for the meeting - including 25 slides not shown to the public - are available here. The video of the meeting is available here. The first statement comes at about 2:17:38 into the meeting.

In response to a question from the Council, Ms. Durham-Aguilera, the civilian program director for the entire Corps effort around New Orleans, says,

"We've got engineering analyses of those outfall canal walls and those safe water elevations ongoing right now with Sewerage & Water Board and levee authorities. So we're looking to see if we can physically improve those walls further and assure that Sewerage & Water Baord would not have an overtopped system."

A few minutes later, at 2:23:48, again in response to a question, Col. Sinkler says,

"After the Safe Water Elevation studies are complete and after they [the canal walls] are rehabilitated based upon the information we gather from those studies, they will be able to accommodate any needs that the Sewerage & Water Board has to remove rainwater through those canals. And things are well on track to do that. We're working hand in hand with the Sewerage & Water Board to ensure that's the case."

This is HUGE news. After over four years, the Corps has publicly pledged to fix the walls along the outfall canals to eliminate the need for "safe water levels." So when will those studies be done?

"The corps' new goal is to have all three new analyses -- along with any residual work required to raise safe water elevations -- finished no later than the June 1 start of next hurricane season."
- Times-Picayune, September 28, 2009

Oh.

So they won't even begin designing improvements until the 2010 hurricane season. Maybe they'll be done for the fifth anniversary of Katrina next August.

By the way, don't forget the Corps had plans right from the beginning in early 2006 for "bank stabilization contracts" which would have shored up the walls along with installing the gates and pumps that are out there now. Those contracts were budgeted at $29 million and were included in the same document which laid out the plans for the gates, Revision 1 of the post-storm Project Information Report. The scope of those contracts is here, while the budgetary numbers are here:


I've already written about the bank stabilization plans three times before: September 14, 2006, January 13, 2007, and March 15, 2007. Those plans went "poof" at some point, probably around the same time the Corps was deciding it was too expensive to line the canals as part of the permanent solution - late 2005 and early 2006. Who knows where the money went?

Now admittedly, the scope of bank stabilization has undoubtedly changed as the Corps has studied the problem repeatedly ad infinatum over the last four years, but the intent to do something and to set aside tens of millions of dollars were there right after the storm. And here we are over four years later, and the Corps is now "announcing" the same thing like the citizens of New Orleans should be pleased they've come to the same conclusion they came to years ago. And it could be another year before anything at all is done.

So while it is BIG news that they are saying they will "rehabilitate" and "physically improve" the walls after not doing anything to them since spring of 2007 (minor work at 17th Street to bring the Safe Water Elevation there up to 6 feet), one must remember the context - they already decided to do this once before, and then shifted the dollars somewhere else. The difference this time around is that they have said it in a public meeting that is on video for perpetuity, rather than in an internal report that no one gets to see without at FOIA request. They need to have their feet held to the fire this time around, especially since they have decided - against the wishes of all the people actually protected by their work - that Option 1 is the way.

Update - 11/17/09
On November 16, 2009's 9 PM newscast, local TV station Fox 8 covered this story, (video here)providing more essential detail.

The nut of the article is provided by the Corps John Grieshaber:

"'There are a number of possibilities and they are unique to different situations. Deep soil mixing is one, driving new sheet pile to cut off seepage is another, modification of the internal walls of the canal, and putting relief wells,' Grieshaber said. 'Deep soil mixing is when you actually go into the foundation and you mix cement and form columns which changes the strength of the soil. It makes the soil a lot stronger.'"

All of these methods are quite extreme, far more extreme than the simple pouring of rock done near the I-10 bridge over the 17th Street canal in 2007. In fact, deep soil mixing (DSM) and driving seepage cutoffs are the exact methods proposed for the canal deepening that is at the heart of Option 2, which the Corps claims they are not authorized to build. Black & Veatch wrote about both of these methods extensively in their description of the canal deepening options in the 2009 90-day report. The phrase "DSM" appears 44 times in that report.

The fact the Corps has acknowledged they are essentially looking at completely rebuilding sections of the canal walls (likely along London Avenue, but very possibly along 17th Street as well) in the style of Option 2 is quite a large admission.

A few points regarding this:

1) The gates have never been closed at the Orleans Avenue canal, since its safe water level is 8 feet, a very, very tall limit. If similar safe water elevations had been in effect since Katrina all three canals instead of just one, there would have been NO NEED for closure of the Corps' gates and the operation of the Corps' much-investigated pumps since their installation. Instead, the gates at 17th Street (SWE = 6 feet) have dropped twice (Gustav & Ike, both in 2008), and the London gates (SWE = 5 feet) have dropped four times (Gustav & Ike, September, 2009, and Tropical Storm Ida in 2009).

2) The gates and pumps have cost over $400 million in engineering, construction, and maintenance since 2005. How much more bang for their buck could the Corps have gotten by also putting a sum far smaller than that into the walls as well?

3) I have repeatedly asked representatives of Corps Public Affairs offices at the District, Division, and Headquarters level to comment on this story over recent days, but they have not responded to my requests. However, they have spent hours reading my blog; I assume there will be a press release at some point, because otherwise they are ignoring the possibility of "getting their side of the story" out there - a tenet of their strategic communications strategy.

4) The Corps wants to implement Option 1 - against the wishes of local citizens and their representatives - but they have done very little to ensure the entire system of Option 1, i.e. the canals themselves, will work properly. It has been over four years, and besides fixing the breaches and obviously damaged portions of the canal walls and levees, all the Corps has done is pour some rock along a short stretch of the inside of the 17th Street canal.

If the Corps is so hell-bent on putting in Option 1, they should be forced - in writing - to implement engineering measures to ensure safe water levels in each canals that can never impede drainage flow during any rainfall event - as long as those measures do not also impede future Option 2 canal deepening. And the perfect vehicle for that written promise is the Project Patnership Agreement (PPA) governing the permanant pump stations project. That PPA is currently being negotiated between the Corps and the State of Louisiana. The localities may never have another opportunity to make the Corps commit to these repairs again - the PPA is the best chance. Let's hope the state steps up - now that there has been multiple acknowledgements of the wall repair efforts in public - and makes the Corps stand behind their statements with legally enforceable language.

Slippage - Part 2

As mentioned in my previous post Karen Durham-Aguilera and Col. Sinkler were scheduled to appear before the City Council on November 5th. They did so, and the video is here. And the slide presentation - with 25 slides not presented to the public - is here.

As expected, there was a lot of other "stuff" in their presentation, with the list of late projects on page 7, after all the Big Numbers.

So here's the list:

For reference, here's the list that was presented at the August 18 CRPA meeting:

From a surface perspective, things appear to have gotten better. There are now only 12 late projects on the list rather than 15. Also, many of the problem projects in St Bernard Parish and Orleans parish are apparently now on a faster track.

However, there are also some deepening problems. Moving through some of the same topics as in my last post...

West Closure Complex

The biggest problem that jumps out is the West Closure Complex (WBV-90), with its 100 year protection completion date of September 18, 2011, ten days later than the schedule from three months ago.

The Corps is pouring around a billion dollars into this project on the West Bank. On October 30, 2009, they held a big groundbreaking to-do, with invited dignitaries and media. The Times-Picayune and the Associated Press and local TV stations covered it, and the Corps got the story that they wanted out there, including a huge lie from the Corps.

From Fox 8's coverage:

"The surge gates should be complete by the 2011 hurricane season, according to Corps spokesmen."

and from the Times-Picayune, as I noted in the last post:

"The floodgates are expected to be completed by June 2011"

Finally, the Corps has repeated the same thing in their own propaganda update, published November 9th, 2009:

"The nearly $1 billion complex will provide 100-year level risk reduction by hurricane season 2011."

That is not the truth. The truth is that according to the Corps' own schedule, the West Closure Complex will not offer 100 year protection to the vast majority of the West Bank until most of the 2011 hurricane season is over.

By the way, the cost of the project appears to be ballooning also. The Times-Picayune mentioned this,

"Friday's event capped a week in which the corps held a three-day closed-door summit at a Metairie hotel to brainstorm ways to cut $200 million to $300 million from the project to keep it under budget.

Tom Podany, chief of the corps' protection and restoration office, said it's unclear whether the goal was met because the corps is still reviewing the proposals.

'This is part of the normal process of doing cost containment and trying to find the best value,' he said. 'We're looking at different construction techniques to keep the project under budget and on schedule."

St Bernard Parish projects

Another worrying development is the further latening of the completion of the storm protection around St Bernard Parish. In August, all three major projects were due to be late. While two of them (LPV-145 and LPV-146) have apparently been pulled back, the third one (LPV-148.02) has gotten radically later. LPV 148.02 is the levee and planned T-wall on the southern side of the Parish.

In August, the projected 100-year completion date was September 7, 2011, which was bad enough. Now, it has slipped another three months to December 11, 2011, or completely after the 2011 hurricane season. Two other St Bernard projects also will not be done until after the deadline.

West Return Wall

Finally, Colonel Gunter's comments at the August 6, 2009 City Council meeting about pulling the West Return Wall (which is the western flank of storm protection in Jefferson Parish) back before the deadline have proven dead wrong. Both north and south segments have slipped further since the August update, with a 100-year completion date of the fifth anniversary of Katrina.

Summary

Of course, none of this is the Corps' fault; it never is. While the slide with the late projects was up on the screen, here is what Karen Durham-Aguilera said:

"To get this amount of construction done in a relatively short amount of time is an intense amount of work. We do have several contracts that are projected beyond June 2011. These are on this slide. A year ago, there were 27. Today, there are 12. Even the ones on this list have improved considerably from where they were a few months ago. And just about everything is in the summer of 2011. So this continues to be something we work on, along with the state, the levee authorities, and the levee districts, and our construction firms to continue to see how much time we make up during construction.

A lot of the challenges with these projects before they're awarded is the real estate acquisition and the real estate needs that the state and the levee authorities have to deliver to allow us to do the construction. But once we get through that hurdle we're ready to go and we make up a lot of time then."

So the only reason that the largest civil works project underway in the entire country will be late - according to the person titularly in charge of that effort - is that the locals are slow on delivering the land.

There's one other thing about her statements above. She claims, "Even the ones on this list have improved considerably from where they were a few months ago." That's just not true. Of the 12 projects on the latest list, only four have had their 100 year completion dates improve since August. The other 8 have all slipped, some substantially. In fact, 2 of those 8 were previously projected to be completed on time, and have now slipped past June 1, 2011.

It shouldn't be this hard to parse everything the Corps says, and one shouldn't need such a tremendous amount of knowledge to interpret it. They have a long way to go in being straight with the public.