The Big Dig in Boston
Collosal cost overruns combined with what appears to be shoddy materials and workmanship.
The latest:
Big Dig
tunnels spring 237 leaks. Despite repeated assurances that it had Big Dig leaks under control,
the Turnpike Authority has allowed the number of leaks to explode in the last two years and has been forced to
launch a fresh effort to plug hundreds of trouble spots, according to an analysis of Big Dig records.
Officials say Big Dig leaks
are worse than thought. Hundreds of Big Dig leaks have festered for years because of infighting
and red tape, leading state officials to acknowledge flaws are worse than imagined and could permanently
damage project tunnels, the Herald has learned. "I feel we have inherited a project that is riddled with
flaws, and it has become a major preoccupation," state Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen said yesterday
in his first extensive public comments about massive tunnel leaks plaguing the $14.8 billion project.
Glue Maker for Big Dig Is Charged in '06 Death.
The supplier of the epoxy that federal officials have blamed for the collapse of a Big Dig tunnel was indicted
Wednesday [8/8/07] in the death of a woman crushed by falling ceiling panels. The company, Powers
Fasteners Inc., was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter.
Year after tunnel death, motorists
relax. One year after 12 tons of concrete ceiling panels fell in a Big Dig highway tunnel,
crushing a car and killing a passenger, Dave Weibe can finally drive his own car through the tunnels
without nervously eyeballing the ceiling.
Fore!
Score a bogey for Big Dig. It has been called a boon doggle, a crime scene, and countless expletives
spewed by drivers stuck in traffic. Now authorities are investigating how the Big Dig — or, more
precisely, a structure built for the project — became something else: the site of an unauthorized indoor
driving range for state troopers who love golf.
State claims negligence
in $ suit vs. Dig bigwigs. The state is slamming Big Dig designers, builders and contractors
with a mega-lawsuit today [11/27/2006] alleging their negligence led to the fatal tunnel collapse this summer
and that the state is entitled to millions of dollars to cover the fallout. Attorney General Tom Reilly
is expected to file a civil suit today in Suffolk Superior Court alleging gross negligence, negligence and
breach of contract against six companies involved in the "design, installation and oversight of the I-90
tunnel collapse," according to a state official familiar with the suit.
Big Dig's design cuts
questioned. Big Dig project managers persuaded the designer of the Interstate 90 connector
tunnel ceiling to reduce by half the number of bolts supporting each ceiling hanger, the Boston Sunday Globe
reported [9/17/2006].
Big
Dig officials chose not to retest. Project documents show that officials overseeing the Big Dig
chose not to retest most of the bolts in the tunnel, including those that would suddenly fail seven years
later, causing last month's fatal ceiling collapse.
Bad Days for the
Big Dig. It's no doubt true that the largest public works project in the nation's history has
grown corpulent on federal largesse, soaring from an estimated price tag of $2.2 billion in 1983 to
somewhere near $15 billion today. And $15 billion hasn't yet bought a tunnel system free from
hundreds of leaks (including a monster 300-gallon-per-minute gusher), falling debris, collapsing walls, and
rampant fraud.
Agency chief quits over Big Dig
death. The chief of the agency overseeing Boston's Big Dig resigned Thursday [7/20/2006]
under pressure from the governor, two weeks after falling concrete crushed a woman to death in her car.
The departure of Matthew Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, was announced just
90 minutes before a hearing was supposed to begin on Gov. Mitt Romney's effort to remove him
from the $14.6 billion highway project.
Poll
suggests little confidence in tunnel safety; Half blame contractors for problems. The
public primarily blames contractors for the fatal ceiling collapse in a Big Dig tunnel, but is deeply
skeptical that anyone will be prosecuted, according to a new Boston Globe poll that indicates widespread
cynicism and safety concerns about the $14.6 billion project.
Massport
rejects parts of Big Dig. The Massachusetts Port Authority is refusing to take ownership of
a 3/4-mile section of the Ted Williams Tunnel and a nearby elevated ramp leading into Logan International
Airport, saying the structures are in poor condition and require significant repairs, according to documents
obtained by the Globe.
Critics Cite Lack
of Big Dig Oversight. When Boston's Big Dig was still on the drawing board, state and federal
transportation officials picked an engineering powerhouse and a smaller, well-established firm to build the
forbiddingly complex tangle of tunnels, ramps, bridges and highways. And then, critics say, the officials
stepped back and let the two companies do their job with little or no oversight.
Problems
with bolts reported in 1994. More than 4 percent of ceiling anchor bolts failed strength tests
after being installed in the Ted Williams Tunnel in 1994, and the company installing the drop ceiling in the
tunnel complained that the problem was at least partly caused by air pockets in the concrete roof.
The
crumbling legacy of Tip O'Neill. All politics is local, Tip O'Neill famously said, and it surely
doesn't get any more local than when a 6,000-pound slab from a project championed by the late House speaker
falls on a 38-year-old newlywed from the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, crushing her to death as her
husband drives her to the airport. O'Neill died in 1994, but the political culture he epitomized is
alive and well and enshrined in the Big Dig, a slough of corruption, callousness, and cover-ups that
had become a synonym for government mismanagement long before it killed Milena Del Valle on July 10.
Dig fixes may cost taxpayers. When it
comes to figuring out who is going to pay for the repairs to the Big Dig tunnels, it's an easy process of
elimination. … The feds in 1997 officially cut off funding for the Big Dig at $8.54 billion.
Ceiling collapse is only the tip of
Big Dig problems. Tests conducted in 1999 reportedly showed that bolts holding the ceiling
panel in the I-90 connector tunnel, where Milena Del Valle was killed, had a tendency to come loose, and
inspections of the I-93 Big Dig tunnels early last year revealed 189 defective wall panels and more than
2,000 water leaks. "The Big Dig was billed as something far different from what it became," [Gov.
Mitt] Romney told The Washington Times on Wednesday [7/19/2006]. "It's been a hugely expensive and
wastefully mismanaged project, and no wonder a lot of motorists keep their fingers crossed as they go
through it," he said of the most expensive highway project in American history.
Nationwide
search begun for other flawed tunnels. Federal highway officials have sent out a nationwide appeal
seeking to identify other tunnels that rely on the same bolt-and-epoxy ceiling fasteners whose failure is now
being eyed as the cause of the Big Dig tunnel tragedy.
[This is a variation of the grade school alibi, "See? Everybody else does it too!" In
this case, the officials are hoping to find at least one other highway tunnel that was built with
faulty materials, but how many other tunnels cost $14.6 billion?]
Workers
doubted ceiling method. Field tests by construction workers indicated that bolt-and-epoxy fasteners
might not support the multi-ton ceiling panels in the Interstate 90 connector tunnel, but the firm that
designed the tunnel persuaded Big Dig officials to use the system anyway, law enforcement officials said
yesterday [7/17/2006].
"Big
Dig" collapse is a blow to urban dream. Boston's $15 billion "Big Dig" was meant to inspire
awe, an engineering marvel on scale with the Panama Canal that would thrust U.S. cities into a new era.
Instead, it faces a crisis of public confidence after a fatal tunnel collapse that could derail plans for other
U.S. urban mega-projects.
[Good!]
Gov. Romney Takes
Control of Big Dig Probe. Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation Friday [7/14/2006] giving him
control of inspections in the Big Dig tunnel system, where falling ceiling panels fatally crushed a
woman. The legislation was passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature late Thursday, which would also give
the governor ultimate say on when the tunnels reopen, instead of the Turnpike Authority chairman.
Politics Have Kept the
Costly Big Dig Afloat. The Massachusetts congressional delegation intensely lobbied colleagues to
overturn a presidential veto by a single vote in the Senate in 1987, prying open the federal money spigot for
the project. Since then, political maneuvering by lawmakers, state officials and private contractors has
kept the problem-plagued project awash in public money — despite critics who brand the Big Dig a
$14.6 billion boondoggle. "Politics created the Big Dig," said Jeffrey Berry, a Tufts University
political science professor. "It was a highly political project from the very beginning."
Massachusetts
Tunnel Is Dedicated to Tip O'Neill. O'Neill, who retired in 1987 and died in 1994, was instrumental
in the project's earliest stages, battling a Reagan administration leery of its price tag even when it started at
just $2.6 billion. In the end the Big Dig cost more than $14.6 billion.
Big
Dig problems may date back to 1999. Contractors knew as early as 1999 that there were problems
with some of the bolts attaching massive concrete panels to the ceiling of the Big Dig highway tunnel where
a woman was crushed by 12 tons of falling concrete, Massachusetts' attorney general said.
Big Dig
possible defect count quadrupled. Inspectors on Thursday [7/13/2006] quadrupled to 240 the number
of possible ceiling bolt problems in a Big Dig tunnel where a woman was crushed by falling concrete, a
still-closed section at the center of Gov. Mitt Romney's push to oversee the safety of the troubled project.
60
bad fixtures found in ceiling. Inspectors have found at least 60 faulty bolt fixtures that
supported the ceiling of the Interstate 90 connector tunnel in the same section where concrete ceiling
panels fell and crushed Milena Del Valle, state officials said yesterday [7/12/2006].
Two Cities, Two Approaches.
Officials say the Big Dig [was] more costly than the Panama Canal, the Alaska Pipeline or the
Hoover Dam, if those investments were adjusted for inflation.
Boston's Big Dig Is
Finally Completed. When the clock runs out on 2007, Boston will quietly mark the end of one of
the most tumultuous eras in the city's history: The Big Dig, the nation's most complex and costliest
highway project, will officially come to an end.
'Big Dig' Highway Contractor Agrees to
$6 Million Settlement. The family of a woman killed when the ceiling of a Big Dig tunnel
collapsed on her car last year has agreed to a $6 million settlement with the company that supplied
the epoxy blamed for the accident, an attorney said Monday [12/24/2007].
Big Dig deal criticized by
contractor. Prosecutors reached a $458 million settlement with contractors over tunnel
defects that caused a fatal 2006 accident — but a small contractor that isn't involved in the agreement
says it unfairly spares the most responsible party from criminal charges. Under the deal announced
Wednesday [1/23/2008], Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the multibillion-dollar consortium that oversaw design
and construction of the Big Dig, the nation's costliest public works project, agreed to pay $407 million.
The Big Dig: Links
to numerous news items about the project.
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