Armstrong Case Judgement and Findings of Fact.PDF

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1 April 12, 2013 Dr. W. Allen Marr, Founder and CEO of Geocomp Corporation, provided pivotal expert witness testimony in the long-standing Hurricane Katrina litigation known as the Armstrong case, which persuaded U.S. District Court Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr., to rule in favor of the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Washington Group International, Inc. Dr. Marr, serving as one of the primary experts for the U.S. Government, provided testimony regarding the cause of floodwall breaches in the East Bank Industrial Area that caused inundation of the New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward. His testimony, along with others, persuaded Judge Duval that the Plaintiff s expert theory of the cause of floodwall failure was unsupported by accepted geotechnical engineering practices, that its factor of safety calculations were wrong and its modeling flawed. Dr. Marr s testimony is cited as influential in the Court s Judgment and Finding of Fact. Below is a summarized version of the ruling. For more details, select the link below for the complete Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law issued by the United States District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana. Armstrong Case Judgement and Findings of Fact.PDF Atlanta Boston Chicago New York San Francisco

2 JUDGMENT AND FINDINGS OF FACT IN RE KATRINA CANAL BREACHES CIVIL ACTION CONSOLIDATED LITIGATION Armstrong, C.A. No New Orleans, Louisiana - April 12, 2013 On 12 April 2013, United States District Court Judge Stanwood R. Duval, Jr. ruled in favor of the United States and the Washington Group International, Inc. as Defendants in an action referred to as the Armstrong case brought by several homeowners affected by the failure of floodwall paralleling the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in August, The Plaintiffs alleged that the negligent environmental remediation of the East Bank Industrial Area ( EBIA ) performed by United States and the Washington Group International, Inc. ( WGI ) resulted in the North and South Breaches of the EBIA floodwall that parallels the Lower Ninth Ward. These two breaches resulted in the rapid inundation and destruction of the Lower Ninth Ward and parts of Chalmette. Plaintiffs contended that WGI and the Corps failed to conduct a full and competent geotechnical site assessment, failed to evaluate fully the impact of their activities on the floodwall, and failed to employ prudent engineering practices, i.e., thereby breached their respective duties to maintain and protect the integrity of the levee and floodwall system along the EBIA. 1

3 Aerial view of South Floodwall Breach after Hurricane Katrina showing barge in Lower Ninth Ward (photo from USACE). In preparation for the construction of a new lock system on the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal ( IHNC ), the Corps contracted with WGI to perform environmental remediation services in the EBIA. This work included site characterization, demolition, removal of contaminated materials, and site restoration. It required numerous excavations, removal of piles, and backfilling. The work started in 2004 and was completed just months before Hurricane Katrina. 2

4 Two floodwall breaches occurred on the morning of August 29, 2005 that flooded the lower Ninth Ward. The North Breach occurred at approximately 6:00 a.m. and resulted in a 180-foot long gap in the floodwall. The South Breach occurred at approximately 7:00 a.m. and created a 790-foot long gap. The Plaintiffs through their experts, Dr. Robert Bea (retired U. of California at Berkeley Professor of Civil Engineering) and Professor David Rogers (Missouri U. of Science and Technology), alleged that WGI's work was negligent in that it created and/or exacerbated subsurface pathways for Hurricane Katrina's surge water pressures, which were transmitted through the improperly backfilled and compacted excavations directly into the underlying organic clay layer. The seminal witness for Plaintiffs, Dr. Robert Bea, testified for a total of four days. He concluded that instantaneous pressure transfer from the flood side to the protected side of the floodwall (like a brake system in a car) resulted in significant uplift pressures beneath the floodwall and played a substantial role in the ultimate failures at the North and South Breaches. Plaintiffs experts maintained that the vertical and horizontal uplift pressures induced global and lateral stability failure resulting in the North and South Breaches. They posited that these uplift pressures compromised the entire system by essentially levitating the levee, which allowed the lateral forces from the canal to laterally displace the floodwall even though the wall did not fail at the largest excavation. According to Plaintiff experts, these pressure transfers, uplift pressures and floodwall failures could have been prevented had WGI and the Corps complied with industry custom and practice, as well as the myriad of policies and regulations mandating WGI and/or the Corps perform a geotechnical 3

5 analysis on the potential impact of this excavation activity on the adjacent EBIA floodwall. Moreover, before Defendants completed their work, they knew (or reasonably should have known) that the IHNC and the organic clay beneath the EBIA was hydraulically connected; thus, an increased tidal or storm event in the IHNC would result in enhanced underseepage and the transmission of hydraulic pressures beneath the floodwall. The overarching focus of the trial was the expert testimony with respect to causation and the geotechnical methods used to support Plaintiffs' theory of causation. WGI maintained that its environmental remediation was not a contributing cause of the two EBIA floodwall breaches. WGI s expert, Dr. Francisco Silva-Tulla contended that Dr. Bea's analysis was fatally flawed and that he created a "third type of pore water pressure" to explain the breaches which is illegitimate and not based on proven scientific methodology. WGI also maintained that Dr. Bea had erroneously applied certain computer models in arriving at his conclusions. The United States argued that Plaintiffs' claims are barred by the Flood Control Act of 1928 which protects the government from liability for flood damage. Moreover, the United States through its experts Dr. W. Allen Marr of Geocomp Corporation, Professor Tom Brandon of Virginia Tech, Professor Timothy D. Stark of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Pat Lucia of GeoSyntec Consultants and Dr. Joseph Dunbar of the USACE, maintained that Washington Group s activities did not cause the floodwall failures. The government s experts found no evidence that Washington Group s work caused seepage below the floodwall or affected the Lower Ninth Ward levees and floodwalls in any way. 4

6 Prior to the trial in a Motion for Summary Judgment, the focus of Plaintiffs causation theory concerned instability that was caused by the effects of underseepage of water. Plaintiffs then maintained that the deep excavations dug by WGI "'altered the flow of sub-surface ground water, opened portals to sub-surface permeable layers, and allowed the unabated underseepage through permeable soils below the flood wall during Hurricane Katrina when the EBIA was covered with high water" which allegedly caused the North and South Breaches. After an extensive field and laboratory testing program showed that the subsurface soils were organic clays with low permeability, Dr. Bea altered his causative theory from water seepage through the levee foundation to one of instantaneous transmission of pore pressure as the primary cause of the uplift pressure and de-stabilization of the floodwall occurred. Dr. Bea also testified unequivocally that in his analysis, "flow" is where "that molecule of water on one side of that floodwall moves underneath the floodwall and up to the other side" and which is a form or element of underseepage. On the other hand, "uplift pressure" is "pressure transmission underneath the floodwall on the other side, but without the molecule of water itself having gone under the floodwall." Dr. Bea further testified: "... both breaches occurred crucially because of these uplift pressures transmitted from the East Bank Industrial Area, and particularly, the poorly backfilled excavations that contacts the swamp-marsh layer, which has some very unique characteristics and properties, to then communicate to the landside of the floodwall that produces an uplift force that then is the critical horse in this horse race of instability causing failure defined as I've got a breach and I'm flooding the Lower Ninth Ward. It's WGI's excavations [that] were a substantial contributing factor without which the breach 5

7 would not have occurred." Dr. Bea also opined that regardless of whether the soil is treated as drained or undrained, the uplift pressures resulted in factors-of-safety that were "nearly identical" and were in essence unstable. In reaching his decision Judge Duval was persuaded by Dr. Marr s proof that Dr. Bea s calculations for factor of safety were wrong and that Dr. Bea used idealized excavations in his models that did not attempt to recreate with any specificity the actual excavations at either the North Breach or South Breach. No sufficient and clear explanation was ever given to the Court as to why the actual excavations were not modeled. In addition, none of Dr. Bea s models included a case of no excavations which would have provided the ultimate proof as to what effect the excavations had on the stability of the EBIA floodwall. Judge Duval found that Plaintiffs did not provide any reliable data to demonstrate the difference that excavations made by WGI made to the performance of the levees. He also found that the inputs used for computer models to achieve the results that Dr. Bea postulated did not jive with the actual scientifically ascertained values for compressibility and undrained soil, making the results suspect. The Court also found that Dr. Bea s "proof" of a hydraulic connection and the resulting "uplift pressure" as a substantial cause of the North and South Breaches was unavailing. The Court found Dr. Bea's testimony not direct and quite circular. His North, South and Near Breach models presented were unconvincing. Moreover, Judge Duval was not persuaded by the use of values for clay compressibility that bear no relation to the field conditions constituting a valid scientific method. 6

8 Judge Duval found that the Plaintiffs failed to convince him that Dr. Bea s theory of instantaneous pressure wave transmission or dilatational wave theory had a valid application in solving levee and floodwall failures during hurricane storm surge events. The Court accepted Dr. Marr's testimony that the dilatational wave theory pertains to explosive shock waves that would increase stresses in the ground, both total stress and pore pressure; however, there would be no change in strength. Likewise, the decoupling of flow from uplift pressure did not seem sufficiently scientifically supported as shown by Professor Brandon. Finally, the Court stated that it could not base a finding of causation using modeling that has used a value for the compressibility of the EBIA clay which is appropriate to that of sandstone, or about 30,000 times less compressible than the EBIA organic clay. 7

Expert Report. Robert Glenn Bea, Ph.D., P.E.

Expert Report. Robert Glenn Bea, Ph.D., P.E. Expert Report of Robert Glenn Bea, Ph.D., P.E. Prepared for Plaintiffs in: Katrina Canal Breaches Consolidated Litigation [Civil Action Number: 05-4182 K (2)] United States District Court Eastern District