U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awards 48 of 52 levee repair missions

New Orleans CityBusiness, Feb 27, 2006 by Tommy Santora

Louisiana construction companies are playing a huge role in helping the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repair levees and floodwalls damaged in Hurricane Katrina by June 1, the start of the next hurricane season.Task Force Guardian, created by the Corps solely for the $750-million fast-track, levee repair mission, awarded 48 of 52 multimillion-dollar contracts to Louisiana contractors.

These jobs come along at a good time, said Robert Boh, president of New Orleans-based Boh Bros. Construction Company LLC. Boh Bros. received a $27.8-million contract to build interim floodgates and a $6.19-million contract to repair a 455-foot breach on the 17th Street Canal. They also received a $15-million contract to repair a levee and floodwall in eastern New Orleans along the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway.MR Pittman Group LLC of New Orleans is also performing task force work. President Michael Pittman said his company has four contracts worth a total of $47 million, including a $25.5-million contract to build interim floodgates on the London Avenue Canal. Task Force Guardian accounts for half of the jobs the Pittman Group is working on, he said. About 41 miles of levees and floodwalls were damaged along the 284-mile system protecting New Orleans. The work to restore previous levels of protection include repairing damaged levees and floodwalls and correcting any design and construction flaws. The work also includes installing temporary gate closures and pumping stations at three outfall canals in Orleans Parish, said Brett Herr, TFG chief of programs and project management.The interim protection does in fact provide ... the same level of protection that they had before (Katrina), Herr said. It may not look as pretty.Herr said TFG divided the project into multiple basins: Plaquemines, St. Bernard, eastern New Orleans, Industrial Canal and the Lake Pontchartrain vicinity project to metro New Orleans.In Plaquemines, floodwall and levee damage overwhelmed the hurricane protection, while on the East Bank of Orleans Parish at the London and 17th Street Canals, interior protection needs to be repaired followed by the replacement of I walls with more stable T walls, Herr said.An I wall is a vertical concrete barrier anchored to the levee by steel sheet pile driven vertically into the ground, whereas a T wall sits on a horizontal concrete base. It protects the soil at the wall's base from crashing waves on the wet side and from water pouring over the levee onto the dry side.T walls are anchored by multiple steel beams and driven into the levee diagonally, rather than a single sheet.Stuart Waits, a civil engineer for the Corps and project manager for the repair work at the Industrial Canal, said soil erosion underneath the floodwalls caused breaches by washing away the ground the concrete barriers rested on.Waits' crew is driving 10 miles of T walls along the Industrial Canal.It's normally a 12- to 18-month job but we're doing this in five to six months to get the job done in time, Waits said. We're averaging about 15 to 20 piles of steel a day and we're going to have about 2,200 piles total.Herr said the biggest obstacle is the time constraints.Some contractors are running late but the Corps will find assistance if needed to finish the work on time. ... We're going to get it done by the date, he said. Gilbert Southern Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas, received the top TFG contract at $31.5 million to build interim floodgates at the Orleans Avenue Canal. Granite Construction of Watsonville, Calif., received a $14.37- million contract to repair levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet east of Bayou Dupre. Odebrecht Johnson Bros. JV of Coral Gables, Fla., received a $12-million contract for a Phase II levee- breach repair work at the London Avenue Canal at Mirabeau Avenue.TFG will award seven more contracts to complete the mission.-- Staff Writer Deon Roberts contributed to this report.