The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District, completed an initial breach closure on levee L550 south of Watson, Missouri, Thursday.
“ Closing the L-550_B inlet breach has been an important milestone for USACE since our team arrived on site in late June. The government and contractor team worked collaboratively to identify and mitigate risks to the breach closure by proactively constructing a rock revetment and sand berms along the river bank in order to ensure increased flows and water velocity was not an impairment to construction as the team closed the L-550_B breach ,” said Brendan Kight, USACE Area Engineer .
The original contract of $22.1 million was awarded to Weston Solutions, Inc. of West Chester, PA June 11, 2019, and construction began July 8.
“ The USACE team has partnered very well with Weston Solutions and their key subcontractor, Hendrickson, to place 750,000 cubic yards of alluvial sand in the initial breach closure, ” added Davis. “ The contractor team has done a phenomenal job of resourcing local equipment and operators—in a difficult market, as 70% of the operators are local farmers and land owners .”
There are more than 500 miles of levees on the Missouri, Platte and Elkhorn rivers, and tributaries that have experienced significant flood damage since March 2019.
Due to the magnitude of damage along these levees, repair of the levee system efforts will take an extended period of time to execute.