The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Galveston District awarded a contract in the amount of $370,250.81 to Baton Rouge, La.-based Quaternary Resources Investigations LLC for core drilling, soil sampling and laboratory testing at the Sabine Neches Waterway’s Placement Area 8.
The geotechnical investigation will explore existing containment dike foundation and borrow source soil conditions at the placement area located in Port Arthur, Jefferson County, Texas.
“The contractor will provide labor and equipment to obtain subsurface soil samples and perform laboratory testing on selected samples to characterize the physical and engineering properties of the soils, ” said David B. Boothby Jr., a civil engineer in the USACE Galveston District’s Geotechnical and Structures Section . “ Data from the field and laboratory programs will be used to analyze existing containment dike foundation soils for stability as well as identify potential borrow soils within the placement area.”
According to Boothby, the results of the analysis will be used to develop containment dike designs for future dike elevation raising (as required) to increase capacity of the placement area.
“The study provides critical technical data used for design of containment dikes at Placement Area 8 so that it will continue to have capacity to receive dredged maintenance materials from nearby federal navigation channels, ” said Boothby. “ This work is a small part of the overall effort by USACE to maintain safe navigation in the Sabine Neches Waterway which serves the ports of Port Arthur, Beaumont and Orange.”
Geotechnical work at the placement area is in preparation for planned levee raising efforts in fiscal year 2015.
Work is scheduled to begin October 2013 with an estimated completion date of April 2014.
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Press Release, September 9, 2013