Boston-based ground engineering contractor TREVIICOS is equipping New Orleans’ streets with new flood prevention improvements, playing an important role in rebuilding parts of New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The over $2 billion multi-phased US Army Corps of Engineers’ Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) is upgrading drainage systems along several streets in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, giving the streets the ability to sustain major rainstorms and hurricanes.
Treviicos, who specializes in innovative ground improvement technologies, is hard at work on the streets of the SELA26 phase, replacing soil between and underneath parallel lines of sheet piles with a soil-cement mass. Treviicos is using unique elliptical jet grouting technology to drill up to 75 feet below the streets and construct a 45-foot thick bottom plug. These ground improvements will provide structural support for concrete-covered subsurface drainage canals that will be subsequently superimposed along these streets.
The SELA22 phase, successfully completed by Treviicos, was the first US project in which elliptical jet grouting technology was successfully employed. Elliptical jet grouting uses elliptically shaped cement structural columns that reduce overlap in comparison to circular columns. This results in significantly reduced cement consumption and faster production time.
As part of the SELA project, all roads on which new canals are built will be resurfaced, and new curb and gutter drainage will be constructed flowing to the new canals.
