By W. Robert Thompson, III, P.E. – Dan Brown and Associates, LLC; Sheryle G. Reeves, P.E. – TTL, Inc. and John W. Grabar – Florida Rock Industries, Inc.

Abstract

Florida Rock Industries, Inc. (FRI) began investigating the development of an aggregate quarry in Lee County in eastern Alabama in 2000.  Planning for the site required locating storm water detention ponds, a processing plant, the plant rail trackage, truck scales and planned limits of the quarry pit without infringing on the required undisturbed property perimeter buffer areas.  The quarry and processing facilities were designed to accommodate local aggregate sales by truck and railcar shipments of up to 90-railcar unit trains.  The two major issues for the planned rail facilities were: 1) the site grading required to optimally fit the required trackage onto the available quarry site area; and 2) the required grade crossing of a state highway to connect the plant trackage to the CSX mainline.  The selected two-track loop configuration for the plant trackage required cuts of up to 30 feet and fills of up to 60 feet.  Because of the relatively confined site area and the nearby retention ponds, slopes as steep as 2.5:1 (H:V) were required for the greater fill sections to fit the trackage in the available footprint.  The construction of the lead track required the use of soil nails to stabilize the existing rail bed, compaction grouting to stabilize the subgrade, and a heavy duty MSE wall system for the lead track transition embankment.  The design team worked closely with FRI throughout the development, design and construction process.  Open communication between the various design consultants was critical to developing a workable design that overcame the challenges at the site.   FRI's careful selection of qualified, experienced engineers, consultants, and contractors was the significant contribution to the success of the project. 

Earth fissures are a significant threat to various types of infrastructure in the Southwestern United States and elsewhere in the world. They are caused by differing subsidence rates and magnitudes associated with groundwater pumping in alluvial basins. In this paper, Ravi Murthy and his co-author Jon Benoist, both with the Arizona Department of Water Resources, examine the impact that earth fissuring has on embankment dams used for flood control. One of their main dilemmas as regulators is: "Is it possible to safely rehabilitate dams in fissure risk zones to continue to provide economical flood protection to the public, or does the risk of dam failure due to an undetected fissure present too great a threat to the public?" Check out the HTML Version. 

By Robert Cummings or presentation at the 53rd Highway Geology Symposium, San Luis Obispo, CA, August, 2002.

Highway development projects crossing lands with special scenic or recreational characteristics may be required to meet special aesthetic criteria. Generally, the entity imposing the aesthetic criteria is external to the core roadway construction team. Usually, agencies imposing these criteria are land administration entities, external to highway departments, whose primary role is the preservation of historical or recreational opportunities, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the United States Forest Service, or local governmental agencies with similar responsibilities. However, agencies imposing aesthetic criteria may also be divisions of highway development agencies themselves. For example, in Arizona, the Roadside Development section within the Arizona Department of Transportation has defined aesthetic needs on numerous designated scenic highways.

Aesthetic attainment on highway jobs falls in the category of what many term “soft engineering”, whose design is, in large part, intuitive. This contrasts strongly with the “hard engineering” elements (structures, pavement, line and grade, and so forth) whose design is deterministic and more familiar to roadway designers and builders. From the perspective of the highway designer and constructor, the imposition of unfamiliar and sometimes vague design and construction criteria, by external entities whose approach differs greatly from that of engineers, can be problematic. The aim of this paper is to describe how geology, construction engineering, and visual analysis have been used to alleviate and streamline the process of aesthetic attainment.