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https://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl042408tpleveepaper.98095b74.html
4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper?
11:54 PM CDT on Thursday, April 24, 2008
“It blows my mind.â€
Those are the words St. Bernard parish president Craig Taffaro used to watch videotape Eyewitness News showed him, of floodwalls built to protect his parish.
“That should be criminal,†Taffaro continues.
What he's talking about was witnessed by a St. Bernard Parish resident
who didn't want to be identified, but did have sharp criticism of the
work done by a contractor hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“It's like putting a Band-Aid on the hole of a gas tank of an airplane,†the resident said.
Instead of an airplane, it's a floodwall, and instead of a Band-Aid,
the witness says two years ago, he saw the contractor filling the
expansion joint or opening between the floodwalls with newspaper.
“The whole length of the wall was stuffed with newspaper.â€
And when he confronted the contractor, the contractor blamed Washington for the substandard work.
“He basically told me when Congress sent down the money, it would be repaired the proper way.â€
But during a recent trip to the area, two years later, it was apparent
that didn't happen. Much of the newspaper had deteriorated or been
eaten by bugs, but some still remained. In fact WWL cameras even
captured the date May 21, 2006, on a page of the Parade magazine from
the Times-Picayune.
Eyewitness News asked local engineer Subhash Kulkarni to investigate the findings at the floodwall.
“They should have done a better job than what you see here.â€
Kulkarni is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The
ASCE named him outstanding civil engineer in Louisiana back in 2003.
“I cannot even comprehend that somebody would stuff some newspaper in there.â€
Engineers tell Eyewitness News an expansion joint has three lines of defense. The first is an elastic
strip that helps keep water out. In the middle is the most important
part, a waterstop, which is in fact included in the St. Bernard
floodwall. However what is missing is a rubber joint that goes in
between and helps keep foreign objects out.
The witness who talked to Eyewitness News says the contractor used the newspaper in place of the rubber joint.
Kulkarni says it's not a short term risk, but over time that missing
rubber joint could weaken that waterstop.
“It could be very serious,†Kulkarni said. “It doesn't take a lot of
stress to cause the failure of these floodwalls. We don't know after
two or three years how the main joint will perform. This is the first
line of defense.â€
But the Army
Corps of Engineers says it is confident the floodwall will sufficiently
defend residents of St. Bernard and the Ninth Ward.
“If you look at the repairs we made to the joints, there's not really a
safety issue with the joints at all,†said Kevin Wagner with the Army
Corps of Engineers.
The Corps
also says it’s satisfied with the quality of work done by its
contractor. When asked by WWL if there was any shoddy work involved,
Wagner said, “I don't think so at all.â€
But days before that interview, after a request by Eyewitness News , another Corps employee e-mailed the Corps’ standards for expansion
joint construction and in that e-mail, the Corps employee describes the
specific materials needed as "sponge rubber" that goes next to the
waterstop. That’s the same spot where a witness saw a contractor
stuffing newspaper back in 2006.
When asked if the absence of material behind the waterstop was what was
called for in the contract, Corps spokesman Kevin Wagner called the
project an emergency repair.
“If
we would have built a new floodwall that would not have been the case.
We would have the waterstop, some joint filler material in between and
then we would put an elastic sealer over the top of it,†Wagner said.
“In this case we tried to do the repairs as quick as possible to
protect the water stop before the start of hurricane season.â€
But according to the contract obtained by Eyewitness News,
that may not be the case. The contract calls for Ercon Corporation,
based in Lafayette, Louisiana, to do the almost $2 million of work to
raise and repair the floodwall under the Paris Road bridge.
In the contract, WWL found at least four mentions of field molded
sealants. Kulkarni says that is the sponge rubber material to fill the
cavity in the expansion joint. And he says the contract shows the
rubber material was contractually required to be installed.
“I would say they have not met their obligation to install the joint
correctly. They haven't installed it at all,†Kulkarni said.
Eyewitness News contacted the president of Ercon Corporation by phone and e-mail. He
didn't respond to our repeated requests for a comment on this story.
Further, our investigation revealed Ercon Corporation is not even
licensed by the state's board for contractors. The Corps of Engineers
says as long as the federal government pays for the work, it does not
prevent them from hiring an unlicensed Louisiana company.
“If you're telling me this is an out of town contractor who drives back
to wherever they're from and puts their head on the pillow at night,
does it really matter to them that this particular part of the project
fails?†St. Bernard president Craig Taffaro asks.
Taffaro calls the response from the Corps and Contractor unacceptable.
“Would they let a contractor put Play-Doh in the place of mortar when
they put bricks on their house? No, I don't think so,†Taffaro said.
He says while newspaper doesn't define the entire levee system, it does
have him concerned about the oversight of all work being done in
southeast Louisiana.
“It's an
indictment against the quality of work being done,†Taffaro says.
“Let’s hope that same standard wasn't being used in constructing the
floodwall in constructing the levees.â€