Contract Dispute Might Explain Levee Collapse . . .

In today’s N.Y. Times, Jon Schwartz reports that “[a]n obscure contract dispute from the 1990’sthat describes questionable building practices and unstable soil at a crucialNew Orleans levee may help explain why the walls that were supposed to protectthe city from hurricanes collapsed under the assault of Hurricane Katrina.” To read the article go here (freesubscription required).

The article reports:

The Army Corps of Engineers hired Pittman Construction for $2.6 million in1994 to build a reinforced concrete cap with flood-wall segments calledmonoliths atop the existing earthen levee. But the government found that thecompany’s work was not acceptable in several areas and that the monoliths hadshifted.

The company responded that the problem was not the quality of its work butthe “lack of structural integrity” of the steel sheets that arerammed through the center line of the levee, and “the relative weakness ofthe soils,” which made it extremely difficult to build a stable structure.The company asked for $810,000 to correct the problem.

That request was denied in 1998 by Reba Page, an administrative law judgefor the corps, who determined that Pittman Construction had brought on many ofits own problems by not coming up with a successful way to brace the woodenforms that concrete is poured into. A contractor working on a nearby canalproject, the judge noted, was able to deal with similar soil issues”without the need for extraordinary construction means, delay orexpense.”

Of course, without more information, we cannot assume a connection between the construction problems arising from the1998 contract dispute and the recent levee failures. Hassan Mashriqui, a professor from the Hurricane Center at Louisiana State University, reminded that the documents don’t “tell you what happened after the motion was denied.” The article is certain to state that, based solely onthe legal documents, it is not clear “whether the wall was ultimately repairedto the satisfaction of the corps, and whether the flawed sections of the leveewere the same ones that failed in the storm.” 

Robort Bea, a professor of engineering at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, saw both sides of the story.  Professor Bea said “[w]herethere’s smoke, there’s fire – usually,” but headded: “Documents don’t always tell the whole truth. You have to keepon probing.”

[Meredith R. Miller]