Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company 100 S Railroad Ave Morgan City LA

The situation became problematic because the flood doors had been removed from the old tunnels after they fell into disuse.Ī skilled telecommunications worker inspecting a cable running through the tunnel discovered the leak while it was still passing mud and forwarded a videotape to the city, which did not see anything serious and began a bid process to repair the tunnel. After some weeks, most of the clay between the water and the breach had liquefied, which rapidly increased the rate of flooding in the tunnel.

The pilings did not punch through the tunnel wall, but clay soil displaced by the piling eventually breached the wall, allowing sediment and water to seep into the tunnel.

One of the pilings on the east bank was driven into the bottom of the river alongside the north wall of the old tunnel. The crew members who began work at the site did not know that beneath the river was an abandoned Chicago Tunnel Company (CTC) tunnel that had been used in the early 20th century to transport coal and goods. The City of Chicago then gave permission to install the new pilings 3.5 feet (1.1 m) south of the old pilings.

However, when the City of Chicago specified that the old pilings be extracted and replaced by the new ones, the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company reported back that the old pilings were too close to the bridge tender's house, preventing proper removal without risking damaging or destroying the house. Rehabilitation work on the Kinzie Street Bridge crossing the Chicago River required new pilings. The legal battles lasted for several years, and disagreement over who was at fault persists to this day. The remediation lasted for weeks, and cost about $2 billion in 1992 dollars, equivalent to $4.17 billion in 2022. The resulting breach flooded basements, facilities and the underground Chicago Pedway throughout the Chicago Loop with an estimated 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m 3) of water. The Chicago flood occurred on April 13, 1992, when repair work on a bridge spanning the Chicago River damaged the wall of an abandoned and disused utility tunnel beneath the river. ( January 2010) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

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Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company 100 S Railroad Ave Morgan City LA