The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District, awarded an $8,9 million contract to Pacchiosi Drill U.S.A. of New York for two levee improvement projects near bridges that cross the lower American River in Sacramento. Minimal to no impacts are expected to commuter or recreational traffic on the bridges and nearby trails.
The work represents two of six planned levee improvement projects scheduled to be completed this summer. It’s all part of the American River Common Features Program, a joint effort between the Corps, the state’s California Central Valley Flood Protection Board and the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency to reduce flood risk throughout the region.
The two contracts were awarded jointly because both segments will use jet grouting, a precise construction method that injects a seepage cutoff wall around buried utilities and near the bridges’ delicate foundations. The Corps installed more than 20 miles of seepage cutoff walls into American River levees between 2000 and 2002, but work like this was set aside for later where complicated encroachments existed such as utilities, power lines and bridges. Construction of all the remaining sites is slated to wrap up in 2016.
Pacchiosi is scheduled to begin work in June on the first project, which will close a 200-foot gap in the existing cutoff wall located on the south bank of the American River at the Howe Avenue bridge. In addition, crews will install a blanket of low-permeability material on the waterside slope to reduce erosion, and will raise a 175-foot-long section of the existing levee upstream of Howe Avenue by an average of one foot.
The other project, expected to begin in August, will close a 325-foot gap in the existing seepage cutoff wall on the north bank of the American River at the Capital City Freeway’s crossing. Crews will install cutoff walls into the levee on both sides of the Capital City Freeway, but not completely across the freeway.
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Press Release, April 16, 2014