4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper? | News for New Orleans, Louisiana | Local News | WWLTV.com | News for New Orleans, Louisiana
11:54 PM CDT on Thursday, April 24, 2008
Lee Zurik / WWL-TV News Anchor
“It blows my mind.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
. . .
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.”
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.
(more at link above)
