Your tax dollars at work: Photo Cheryl Reynolds.
Day Four of the “Emergency bank stabilization” that was estimated to take ten days. We have ten feet of sheet pile installed for a 200 foot project. 5% complete. You know that algebra thing “if five percent of a project can be done in four days, how many days will it take to complete the entire project?”
A lot.
The needed sheetpile is supposed to be delivered on Monday. Skip Lisle is supposed to leave tomorrow. Yesterday he was going to approach the city about staying at least through the lodge installation, which we entirely support. I talked with Igor Skaredoff (who is on the oversight committee) and he agreed it was a good idea, and said he would approach city staff about it as well. I have not yet heard the outcome, but as we wait I thought I would just remind regular readers (and first time readers!) that us “crazy beaver people” have a list of good reasons to be doubtful of this “emergency”. This was printed in the Martinez Gazette yesterday.
A previous letter to the editor highlights the secrecy and delay of the Martinez City council, but falls short of describing the actual dishonesty that has taken place. Not only would there have been no emergency if the council had implemented our recommendations sooner, there is no emergency now.
In response to the February report alleging damage to the properties beside the creek due to beaver burrowing, the city issued a no-bid, unpublished, contract to a geotechnical engineer. He visited the site twice and released his report on September 9th outlining that there was no damage to either building, that there was some separation of the bank from the wall, and that this could be cheaply addressed through the installation of pressurized grout and re-vegetation.
The city reviewed his recommendations and their modest price-tag in private and promptly demanded the expert revisit the property. Apparently his solution wasn’t expensive enough, and his findings weren’t dire enough. The expert obligingly returned ten days later and reported that the situation had gravely worsened. The only lasting solution was a 500,000 installation of sheet piling.
His report contained no photographs of this “alarming change” which constituted an emergency. There was no effort to assess the structure, design or age of the wall and there was no explanation of why the separation of a bank from a wall would constitute an emergency in the first place.
Is it a retaining bank?
Worth A Dam hired Laurel Collins, a fluvial geomorphologist, who spent 4 hours inspecting the creek and bank on October 6. She actually entered the water, which no expert had done. She identified a two-foot footing along the wall, which no expert had done. She assessed and documented each beaver tunnel, which no expert had done. She found the tunnels run parallel to the water as expected, not away from it as alleged. The footing is below the bank and likely predates the bank. There are no signs of stress from the slipping of the bank, which was never intended to “hold up” the wall. Ms. Collins’ report, which mirrored the city’s September 9th report, was obviously not dire enough either. For mysterious reasons, the city is committed to a large scale project along this bank, and made sure their expert report justified it as an emergency. As with the Iraq war “the intelligence was fixed around the policy”.
We can only watch to see what follows: residents of the sheet pile-weary Bethel Island might suggest that the vibrating hammer technique to be used will cause significant structural damage to the properties along side the creek. Savvy residents who have watched this debacle from the beginning are waiting for the restaurant Bertola’s to be deemed structurally unsound, for the building to be torn down, and the arrival of a plan to install an underground parking structure in its place.
In the mean time, experts take heed. When the city of Martinez asks you for recommendations, remember to give them the most expensive solution possible.
Heidi P. Perryman, Ph.D.
President & Founder
Worth A Dam
