The dirt on the missing Third Bridge dirt

If City Councilors want more reasons to vote NO at their meeting tonight on whether to keep the Salem River Crossing (Third Bridge) project alive, here's disturbing information on missing dirt from the area where the west bridgehead would be located.

This morning I received this "dirt on the missing dirt" from a trusted source, who said:

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Here is documentation that the Salem River Crossing project management team is misleading the Salem City Council by withholding and misrepresenting information about the costs of the bridge and seismic safety.  

 

What is the foundation of all bridge planning?  The ground upon which to build a bridge.  Well, what happens when the ground is literally pulled out from under the bridge and the bridge planning managers fail to acknowledge it is missing? 

 

The public ends up with an unrealistic bridge plan and cost estimates because public officials have withheld information from elected officials for years in an apparent effort to keep the estimated bridge cost estimates unrealistically low because they do not acknowledging the ground is missing. 

 

(This concern about managers withholding information also applies to greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on downtown businesses, which I could provide to you also.)

 

The Walling family owns the west "bridgehead" of the Salem Alternative and they opposed routing the bridge across their property. Walling called publicly for the proposed bridge to be moved off of his land and when it was not, he removed the land and left an enormous hole where the west end of the bridge was to rest.

 

The full comment that was submitted by Walling for the DEIS [Draft Environmental Impact Statement] states:  

"Your recent Statesman Journal article regarding the addition of a new bridge crossing the Willamette River into West Salem is causing great concern. This is a concern that needs to be brought to your attention immediately.

Although we understand the need for an additional route into West Salem, we fail to see how one of your proposed routes—which would severely disrupt an 80 year old locally owned business—would be considered, as it would directly impact an already highly congested area.

In addition, this latest proposal would route the bridge traffic through our mining operation, which would directly impact a significant number of construction companies who use our material for road and highway paving, parking lots, curb and gutter, and, ironically, bridge construction.

In the immediate Salem area there are a very few gravel mining operations with enough capacity to provide the necessary materials for major construction projects. Should your plan be accepted, builders and construction companies would be forced to source material outside the Salem area, which would impact local businesses and their employees.

We encourage you to take great care in your decision making process rather than eliminate acres of opportunity for the local economy."

Since work on the bridge planning did not stop, the Wallings appear to have decided to take matters into their own hands and literally pull the ground out from under the west side of the bridge.

 

Excavators and trucks the sizes of large buildings worked five or six days a week for most of two years to remove the dirt from the proposed pathway across the Wallings property and sell it or stack it up on their property out of the way.

 

Removing all this ground leaves the west end of the bridge up in the air and greatly increases the costs to build taller and strong bridge supports.  On the east end of the bridge there is a high bank with Front Street on top.  On the West side there is a 30 foot deep hole which will eventually fill with water and be the Walling Phase III Lake.

 

 

As noted above, this dirt did not suddenly vanish, instead it was removed one dump truck-sized excavator scoop at a time over about the last eight years. The bridge planning managers know it is gone but will not factor in the costs of replacing the missing ground into the cost estimates. 

 

The bridge planning manager also will not acknowledge the extra costs to build on the unstable slopes of the steep cuts that were created by the excavation.  (Documentation of the increased costs of building on the steep cuts will be provided to you in a separate email and also show that the bridge planning managers acknowledge the missing ground in some technical reports but not others.)

 

 

This link includes an image from a presentation Mike Jaffe made to the SRC Oversight Team in September of 2014.  It shows the excavation of the ground under the west bridgehead is well underway. 

Yet, the "draft" SRC Construction Impacts "Final" Memo posted by the City of Salem dated June 2016 shows what the "Existing Elevation" was when the excavation had just barely begun. This documents that the cost estimates do not account for the missing ground.

 

 

Also, all property owners along the proposed route were to be given notice of on-site field surveys to be conducted after the Salem Alternative was approved by the SRC Oversight Team in 2013 or 2014. This second round of on-site visits was to be used to update information from the DEIS and prepare the Final EIS. However, the information for the Construction Impact and Geology technical reports relies on surveys from 2009.

 

SRC Geology Final Tech Report Addendum published September 2016 reports on page 2.2 that the most recent site visit was clear back in 2009:

 

"Based on observations from the site visit in 2009, in the vicinity of the gravel mining operations..."

 

Is it reasonable that the Salem River Crossing management team did not use readily available remote sensing images that give topographical information to update reports issued in 2016?  Should the management team have authorized revisiting the gravel mining operations again since there were active mining operations and the report states on page 4-2:

"4.2.1 New Bridge/Gravel Pit Area

Proposed layouts indicate that five to six of the bridge piers, or “bents” would be constructed in the gravel pit, or near the steep side slopes of the pit. The pit has filled with water, which could also make construction more difficult and require cofferdams and dewatering. Figure 4.2-2 shows where the bridge piers would be constructed near the old gravel pit (see Figure 4.2-1 for the location in the APE).

 

Portions of the bridge structure would overlie an area of continued gravel mining. This could result in poor foundation conditions, or lateral loading from unstable side slopes that could impact the structures (Figure 4.2-3; see Figure 4.2-1 for the location in the APE).

 

The project would be required to acquire sufficient adjoining ground so that stable slopes could be maintained during future gravel-mining operations. The property acquisition might also include placing deed restrictions on the adjacent mining operations to limit the slope angles and depth of excavation next to the acquired right-of-way."

 

There is reason to be concerned about the reasons why the SRC management team might have excluded the area of the gravel mining operations from the second round of on-site surveys.  This might have been done because they did not want to base the bridge cost estimates on the amount of ground that had actually been removed and the expanded areas of the steep slopes left after additional years of excavation.