Green Articles
Corps digs deep for levee mud
Much more needed than available so far
By Sheila Grissett : Times-Picayune : February 24, 2008
The Army Corps of Engineers has approved 21 new borrow sites in the region, but they are expected to provide only a fraction of the more than 100 million cubic yards of clay needed to build a bigger, bolder hurricane protection system around southeast Louisiana.
The needed clay, a material officially known as "borrow" and often referred to locally as "mud," would fill more than 20 Superdomes or at least 30,590 Olympic-size pools.
The corps also is evaluating another two dozen or so potential sites, but even if they pass environmental muster and are added to the list of approved borrow sites, they will still make only a dent in the unprecedented quantity of quality clay needed.
"Even if we got everything approved that we're looking at, it would be less than half of what we need," said Maj. Nick Nazarko of the Hurricane Protection Office, which is overseeing most of the 100-year construction.
The corps plans to award more than 200 contracts, worth several billion dollars, to build the so-called 100-year system, reportedly by 2011. The 100-year projects are expected to defend against a storm with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year. As co-sponsors on most of those projects, local levee districts and the state must cough up another $1.5 billion in "match" dollars, buy any additional rights of way needed and help provide the borrow required for construction.
No source of match money has been identified, and it is too soon to know how much additional private property will be needed to accommodate new or expanded structures.
However, the corps already is predicting that the work will require as much as 140 million cubic yards of clay.
If that much dirt was available in a single location, the corps estimates that it would require digging 10 square miles of land 20 feet deep, which is the standard depth of borrow pits in this region.
But because it cannot be found in one spot, the corps must instead identify a number of sites.
21 sources approved
During the past 10 days, Col. Al Lee, corps commander in New Orleans, has approved 21 sites in six Louisiana parishes and one county in Mississippi. Tests indicate that the sites hold the quality of clay needed to meet tightened, post-Katrina standards.
The sites were identified and evaluated in Individual Environmental Reports, which are central to the abbreviated process the government is using to environmentally vet its construction of the 100-year projects.
Individual Environmental Reports 18 and 19 deal exclusively with borrow and are the first of almost two dozen such reports, each examining different aspects of the 100-year work, that must be signed by Lee before construction contracts can be awarded. Although some of the sites in those reports were offered to the corps by willing sellers, the corps identified others as potentially rich sources of borrow -- even though their owners do not want to sell.
In those cases, said Gibb Owen, hurricane protection system environmental coordinator, the corps or its local project sponsors might have to resort to legal remedies if the parties cannot agree on a price or if sellers who do not want their land excavated refuse to negotiate.
"In a perfect world, all borrow would come from government-owned sites provided by willing sellers, but this isn't an ideal situation," Owen said.
The corps is still working on two additional reports that identify even more potential borrow sites, but those documents are not yet public.
Proximity matters
Some unwilling sellers have suggested that the corps buy borrow outside southeast Louisiana and other areas of the Gulf Coast where Katrina has already claimed so much.
But mining for borrow outside the immediate area is problematic, corps representatives said.
To keep costs as low as possible -- those in the business say transportation costs can easily outstrip the cost of dirt -- the corps tries to dig borrow close to the construction sites where it will be used.
Finding the bulk of the borrow locally will leave some especially hard-hit communities, including St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, pocked by 20-foot-deep pits. And it will likely mean that government ends up condemning hundreds of acres of land owned by people who do not want to sell.
"Oh, we know they're going to do it," a resigned Louis Barrett said this week after months of fighting to save his wife's family land on the pastoral, high ground of southern St. Bernard Parish.
Barrett, echoing the sentiments of many of his neighbors, has challenged the corps to come up with an alternative that does not call for "cannibalizing the very land the levees are to protect."
In fact, the corps has recently launched a new kind of borrow-buying vehicle, a "sources sought" contract that would allow the corps to use a different formula for buying large quantities of clay from suppliers with the ability to deliver it, whether by truck, rail or barge.
It does not matter where the borrow comes from as long as it meets corps-approved standards, corps officials said.
Corps decision-makers said they are hopeful that this new push will produce good clay from willing sellers at competitive prices.
"This is not easy," Lt. Col. Murray Starkel told 150 potential suppliers who packed a corps meeting Thursday to talk about supply contracts. "This is graduate level stuff . . . on how to get the clay to meet the 2011 deadline."
Worried about slip-ups
Lee approved Individual Environmental Reports 18 and 19 despite requests from a contingent of community groups whose leaders say the corps is not properly conducting the environmental process producing the documents.
Heading a long list of complaints compiled by geologist Barry Kohl, president of the Louisiana Audubon Council, is the coalition's concern about the criteria being used to select or reject individual sites.
"A concern is that the corps' need for borrow will be so great that the post-Katrina soil standards for selection may be 'liberalized' or 'slip' to allow borrow (that) would not normally pass if the corps was required to provide detailed selection or information in the IERs," Kohl wrote.
The coalition has asked that a Council on Environmental Quality executive come to New Orleans to hear its complaints and review, along with corps leaders, the National Environmental Policy Act process being used to produce the reports. That meeting is next month.
Critics also asked Lee to delay any decisions on the Individual Environmental Reports until after that meeting, but he declined to do so.
Lee said he felt the process is being properly administered and the 100-year projects are too critical to delay the schedule even a few weeks.
Lee said he "welcomes the opportunity" to discuss the group's concerns in detail at next month's sit-down with their leaders and Council on Environmental Quality representatives.
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To track information about upcoming public hearings and review published environmental reports, visit www.nolaenvironmental.gov. To read the minutes of Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection-East meetings, in which borrow is discussed and various documents are posted, visit www.slfpae.com.