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It was supposed to be a triumph of modern engineering. The Olmsted Locks and Dam—situated on the Ohio River, an artery of American commerce—was designed to fix the aging infrastructure of Locks 52 and 53. These two rusting, Depression-era relics were falling apart, threatening to grind shipping traffic to a halt on one of the busiest waterways in the country. The Olmsted project would replace them with something better, bigger, and undeniably impressive.

How impressive? For starters, Olmsted is one of the largest and most complex inland water navigation projects in the world. Think of it as the Amazon Prime of river systems—efficient, high-tech, and responsible for keeping everything moving. The system of locks and dams on the Ohio River controls water levels for barge traffic, ensuring that goods—grain, coal, steel, and more—can move efficiently from the Midwest to the rest of the globe.

And move they did. Until the farmers got in the way.

It was supposed to be a triumph of modern engineering. The Olmsted Locks and Dam—situated on the Ohio River, an artery of American commerce—was designed to fix the aging infrastructure of Locks 52 and 53. These two rusting, Depression-era relics were falling apart, threatening to grind shipping traffic to a halt on one of the busiest waterways in the country. The Olmsted project would replace them with something better, bigger, and undeniably impressive. How impressive? For starters, Olmsted is one of the largest and most complex inland water navigation projects in the world. Think of it as the Amazon Prime of river systems—efficient, high-tech, and responsible for keeping everything moving. The system of locks and dams on the Ohio River controls water levels for barge traffic, ensuring that goods—grain, coal, steel, and more—can move efficiently from the Midwest to the rest of the globe. And move they did. Until the farmers got in the way.
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[–] • 2 pts (edited )

I can't speak to the USACE's failures with regard to the flooding, but will speak to the project procurement and general project contracting boondoggles that plagued this project. The flooding this article documents is - quite frankly - surprising to me, as the study of and determination of normal pool elevations required to operate a look and damn system are fairly rudimentary. That the Corps screwed this up is fairly shocking to me.

The last 8 years of my career, I worked with a seasoned geotechnical engineer that was well renowned throughout the country. He'd worked on numerous megaprojects throughout the world - locks and dams, massive bridge foundations, major tunnels, etc. He'd worked on some aspects of the Olmstead project in its initial stages in a consulting capacity. The following is the gist of my recollections of conversations with him, though some of the details may be sketchy.

The project had been studied by the Corps for decades. The solution they arrived at was the replacement of two lock and dam systems with one. I believe they did the engineering design in house. The way these projects typically are designed and constructed requires an "In the Dry" sequence where massive cofferdams, sheet piling systems and extensive dewatering occurs to enable access to dry strata. The successful contractor bids the job based on a fully developed set of plans that details each aspect of the temporary shoring, dewatering, excavation, etc. to enable construction of the massive dams, tainter gate systems and locks. This is generally some real massive and complex construction that only certain specialized contractors pre-approved by USACE are allowed to bid. But this isn't what happened here.

Lots of .gov agencies both state and federal had been experimenting with alternative projects delivery systems in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and the Corps was no different. Rather than the typical design, bid, build scenario they'd been utilizing for over 80 years, they opted for kind of a hybrid delivery process. Rather than detail every step of the construction - means, methods and materials, the Corps designed and specified the final ultimate improvements, did NOT specify construction of temporary facilities or dewatering, called for an "In the Wet" construction sequence, left the construction means and methods to the contractor and bid the job. They received exactly zero bids on the project. This was circa late 2000s I believe.

I'm uncertain exactly what measures were specified or envisioned, but imagine you are a contractor that has to stage massive concrete pours in a major river (the Ohio) over the course of several years, all the while dealing with potential river flooding, droughts, maintaining traffic on the river and making sure the existing locks can still function while you're doing all that. There wasn't an insurance company in the world that would insure a contractor for that many unknowns.

Meanwhile the Corps can't fathom why they received no bids. They talk with some of the major players, got feedback on what scared them away, made some changes to the contract documents, bid the job again and received a couple bids - all for amounts 2x to 4x what they'd budgeted. This wasn't a cheap project. I'll guess the Corps figured it was maybe a $100M or $200M (that magnitude anyway) contract based on either unit prices or maximum not to exceed pricing. Uncertain how they got there, but ultimately they reached an agreement with a contractor to complete the work based on a time and materials type arrangement.

For those of you not familiar with contracting, this type of agreement can be quite effective when you have an immediate need and limited resources at hand - it is typically used for emergency and other expedient situations where insufficient information is known about exactly what a project will entail. For a short duration project it can be an extremely effective enticement for a contractor to get in there, kick butt, get the work done, get the heck out of there make a nice profit and make everyone happy. Win-win on both parts. But on a huge, long term project with a fixed/known outcome and poorly defined working conditions, it was an open invitation for a massive hemorrhaging of money. And that is what happened.

I believe it was the late 2000s when the initial bidding was unsuccessful, and probably by 2012 when the second iteration occured and the time and materials arrangement was proceeding. I know there were periods of flooding that delayed the work and that it was considered a huge money pit by 2014. I have no clue when the project was ultimately finished as my cow-orker moved to Texas shortly thereafter and then I retired. But the past history combined with the poor performance certainly sounds like the corrupt and ineffective .gov we've all come to know and hate.

Reading this, I feel compelled to track him down and dig up more dirt now. I'll post an update if/when I learn more.

Edit: @germanshepherd