Oregon DEQ Fines Highway Project Contractor

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), after slapping the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) with a $90,000 water quality violation fine associated with the now-stalled Hwy. 20 Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville realignment project, has fined the project's main contractor, California-based Granite Construction Inc., $240,000.

Forty of 61 cited silt and sediment discharge violations affecting the Yaquina River and its tributaries between June 2006 and May 2007 account for the fines. Jeff Bachman of the DEQ's Portland-based compliance and enforcement offices and Mike Wolf of the agency's Water Quality Division in Eugene announced the penalties, issued Aug. 29, in a Sept. 4 news release.

According to the release: "DEQ expressed serious concerns about Granite Construction's failure to take into account potential impacts to water quality when it decided to clear roughly 160 acres of steeply sloped terrain in the project area during the summer of 2006, shortly after work began on the project. DEQ was also alarmed about the company's failure to implement adequate erosion controls before the onset of the 2006-07 rainy season in the Coast Range."

Granite's onsite lead contractor, Yaquina River Constructors (YRC), and its subcontractors cleared the 160 acres of highly erosion-susceptible soils during the intial project stages. DEQ officials have said they began expressing conerns about the need for erosion control measures as early as July 2006. ODOT officials, too, urged the contractor "to prepare for the wet season" and successfully requested that YRC/Granite replace its onsite manager and respond to other "incentives," including the transportation agency's withholding of "progress payments."

By the time the contractors were ready to comply, said investigators, the situation had reached the "too little, too late" point. DEQ officials said the contractors, upon the onset of fall rains, began to make a more concerted effort around February 2007 but that the measures "were still inadequate to prevent significant sediment discharges to streams and wetlands in the project area."

Fish spawning and rearing habitats, as well as noncompliant turbidity levels, were of DEQ officials' main concern. "Multiple slope failures into stream beds, mud flows and discharges of highly turbid storm water have occurred in the area through the past fall, winter and into this spring," department investigators noted.

Near the end of March 2007, Granite management asked to cease work on the project under a "termination for convenience," citing worse-than-anticipated landslide problems that would cost almost $61 million more than the $129.9 million project budget to mitigate. After months of discussion, Granite and ODOT agreed to a negotiated suspension of all work, effective Sept. 1.

According to the suspension agreement, Grainte will abandon plans to lessen the effects of the landslides using the pincushion method, which involves pinning the slide to the mountain. ODOT engineers are working with contractors to develop less expensive alternative methods. Granite officials, too, have agreed to move personnel and equipment to other non-ODOT projects to cut overhead expenses. All other components of the original contract remain in place and construction could resume as early as mid-2008.

Source: Newport News-Times