Green Articles
Corps needs enough clay to fill Superdome 20 times over for levee building project
wwltv.com : Lee Zurik : Friday, January 11, 2008
The levees of southeast Louisiana stretch 325 miles long, but during the next three years, as the Army Corps of Engineers brings the system to a 100-year level of protection, they'll raise more than 200 miles of levees, but need millions of cubic yards of clay to finish the job.
“It's absolutely critical to get this mission accomplished,” said Lt. Colonel Murray Starkel, Deputy Commander and Deputy District Engineer of the New Orleans District.
Starkel said the biggest obstacle in getting the mission accomplished has been a shortage of clay or dirt. The Corps said it needs 100 million cubic yards of it to raise all of the levees in southeast Louisiana, enough clay to fill the Superdome about 20 times.
So far, they've only identified less than a third of the clay they need. That's why the Corps has spent the past few weeks seeking bids from the private sector, asking anyone if they have clay that they're willing to sell to the Corps.
“Right now we're really looking in the Gulf States, but we've had people call and say they’re submitting as far north as Indiana,” Starkel said. “We actually had someone from Alaska send some Dixie cups of soil.”
In the next two months, the Corps said it would launch a bidding process with the hope of securing 10 to 20 million cubic yards of clay by the summer.
“What we're doing is things like reverse auction bids, where we will establish a maximum price we are willing to pay, and just like eBay—but in the opposite direction—they’ll bid themselves down and we'll take the lowest price,” Starkel said.
According to Starkel, the most critical time for levee work will come in the fall and winter, when the Corps hits the peak of its construction work for the state’s levee system.