We’ve periodically updated Matt McBride’s series Debris over at Fix the Pumps and today we note part 9 of his series was posted several months ago when the Corp of Engineers told the West Bank Levee builder Phylway Construction to stop using dirt from the River Birch Borrow Pits in their construction. I mention this because Paul Rioux updated the continuing story of testing the nearly complete levee and what he reports today for the Times Picayune does not sound very promising as we find out the new levee contains things like water heaters and shopping carts. Now I could be sarcastic and suggest using old landfill material to construct levees to combat rising sea levels caused by global warming may be the wave of the future but I won’t. I’ve been around construction too long to understand this kind of thing happens a good bit. The owner of the project has to be vigilant to insure the project is built to their specifications and sometimes that includes busting the contractor’s chops when the specs are not followed. Unfortunately the Corp of Engineers appears to prefer the whitewash and coverup route and the residents over Marrero way are certain to suffer the impacts of that at a point in time in the future, likely after all the current players are long out of the game.
Through my time doing Slabbed I’ve seen the Corp of Engineers excoriated in the local blogosphere over levee issues that Hurricane Katrina laid bare. There are some folks like Western Carolina Professor Rob Young that have the opinion the CoE was scapegoated and indeed Rob tells me he received death threats after writing such in the Times Picayune. For my own part the relationship we have with the CoE here on the coast does not include any flood protection because we simply do not fill in marshes and develop them like happens in metro NOLA. That avoids the issue of depending on levees that inherently will fail over a long enough timeline altogether. That said I also watched the CoE steer post Katrina cleanup/demolition work to politically connected out-of-state contractors after Katrina so I well understand the agency is politicized and that is not a good thing for engineering IMHO. The fact the Corps of Engineers was caught on video trying to coverup the problems revealed by the levee testing just simply illustrates the problems inside the CoE that has made it fair game for majority of the withering criticism leveled at it since Katrina.
So if the Corps of Engineers in bed with the contractor we better find out a bit more about the contractor, Phylway Construction. First off they have been in business for a while and are properly licensed. According to their website: Continue reading “Are the construction people at the NOLA area US Army Corp of Engineers that incompetent or simply on the take? We have more levee debris complete with dueling excavators.”