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Geotechnical News • September 2013
47
ASFE NEWS
THE
GEOPROFESSIONAL
BUSINESS
ASSOCIATION
ASFE
A not-for-profit association established in 1969, ASFE’s purpose is to
help geoprofessionals maximize their importance and value to the
marketplace, achieve business excellence, and manage risk. ASFE
creates more awareness of geoprofessionals’ value through outreach
activities targeted to organizations of clients and those that influ-
ence them. It increases the supply of trusted geoprofessional advisors
through high-impact programs, services, and materials it creates for
the personnel of ASFE-Member Firms.
Damage control
A front-page article in the
July/August
2012 ASFE NewsLog
alerted readers
to a peer-reviewed paper delivered
live as a keynote lecture at GeoCon-
gress 2012, then published in the
proceedings. Titled “The State of the
Practice in Foundation Engineering
on Expansive and Collapsible Soils”
and authored by William N. Houston,
Ph.D., P.E. and John D. Nelson, Ph.D.,
P.E., the paper, left as is, could have
been a boon for hired-gun experts by
virtue of an obviously incorrect defini-
tion of the standard of care applicable
to professionals, and the findings of
research whose origins are question-
able and whose currency has long
since passed. The only way ASFE
could neuter the potential damage was
to develop “discussions” – actually,
rebuttals – for publication in ASCE’s
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvi-
ronmental Engineering.
The Board of
Directors assigned the task to ASFE’s
Geotechnical and Legal Affairs Com-
mittees.
Dennis Shallenberger, G.E
.
(Earth Systems Pacific)
did the heavy
lifting for the Geotechnical Commit-
tee.
Ji H. Shin, Esq., (Earth Systems,
Inc.)
and ASFE Consultant Member
Michael J. Byrne, Esq.
, a partner in
the Gogick, Byrne & O’Neill, LLP law
firm, did likewise for the Legal Affairs
Committees. Now, after not just a little
sturm und drang
, good news: The
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvi-
ronmental Engineering
has said it will
publish both discussions, presumably
with a commentary from Drs. Houston
and Nelson. We’ll keep you posted.
Let your attorneys know!
New corps study suggests geo-
professionals will be kept busy
for years to come
America’s vast network of levees,
dams, navigation structures, and
hydroelectric-power facilities – over-
seen by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers – will decay into oblivion
if the president and Congress can-
not develop new ways to pay for its
maintenance and operation. That’s the
grim conclusion of a new National
Research Council
report
that suggests
expanding revenues and strengthening
partnerships among the private and
public sectors as options for managing
the Corps’ aged water infrastructure.
“Today, the Corps focuses mainly
on sustaining its existing structures,
some of which are in states of signifi-
cant deterioration and disrepair,” said
Carnegie Mellon University’s David
A. Dzombak, Ph.D., P.E., chair of the
committee that wrote the report. He
continued, “Funding for maintenance
and rehabilitation of the Corps’ water-
resources infrastructure…has been
inadequate for decades.” (An earlier
study found that Congress has greatly
broadened the scope and extent of the
Corps’ water-resource and infrastruc-
ture responsibilities during the last
few decades, a period during which
Congress has dramatically decreased
funding for those projects, Dr. Dzom-
bak said.)
The Corps’ infrastructure consists
of some 700 dams, 14,000 miles of
federal levees, and 12,000 miles of
river-navigation channel and control
structures. Its worth in the 1980s was
estimated at $237 billion. Today?
$164 billion. “We now have a scenario
where the water infrastructure is wear-
ing out faster than it is being replaced
or rehabilitated. Some components
could be decommissioned or divested,
but the Corps does not have the
authority to do this.”
The Corps has projects in several
mission areas: navigation, flood-risk
management, ecosystem restoration,
hurricane- and storm-damage reduc-
tion, water supply, hydroelectric-
power generation, and recreation. The
Corps’ successes in addressing mainte-
nance and rehabilitation issues in one
mission area do not often transfer to
other mission areas.
The Corps’ division and district offices
set some budget priorities for main-
tenance and rehabilitation of existing
projects, the report states, but – when
it comes to prioritizing the national
water-infrastructure maintenance-and-
rehabilitation budget – distribution of
responsibility among Congress, the
Office of Management and Bud-
get (OMB), and the Corps remains
undefined. For major rehabilitation
projects, Congress and OMB share
responsibility for funding decisions.
Some traditional management prac-
tices will have to be abandoned to
establish a more systematic approach
to water-infrastructure maintenance
and rehabilitation, the committee
said. For example, for Congress and
OMB to place higher priority on
maintenance issues, they’ll have to
develop fewer new projects (via the
Water Resources Development Act).
Likewise, if the Corps’ is to sustain its
high-priority and most valuable infra-
structure, the executive branch and