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Shades of the Big Dig: Report blames aquapocalypse on crappy bolts, bad glue job
By adamg on Wed, 05/25/2011 - 10:54am
Failed boltA panel of experts assembled by the MWRA blames last spring's catastrophic collapse of the main aqueduct feeding Boston on poorly constructed studs holding together a connection between two parts of the giant water pipe.
The failure of the aquaduct in Weston left much of the Boston area without potable water for several days.
In a report released today, the panel said cracked studs, inadequately protected from corrosion and subjected to greater than designed pressure gave way, leading to a sudden rupture of the coupling. It didn't help, the report adds, that rubber O-rings in the coupling were apparently glued in place with the equivalent of Super Glue, rather than using a factory vulcanization process.
While the stud material hardness was consistent with those specified for the coupling they exhibited characteristics that suggest poor fabrication. Cracks were present on essentially all of the thread "crowns." Additionally, cracks were present at many of the thread "roots." Upon further examination it was determined that the root cracks were located within 9 threads of the fracture surfaces. This location is consistent with the location of the highest stud load.
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Comments
This will continue to cost us
One reason the Feds don't want to give MA funding for projects anymore is the lack of oversight and quality control. These are considered to be quite important in bidding for federal money, and some states have even gotten bonus structures written into contracts for high quality work and on-time or ahead-of-time performance. MA doesn't have the systems in place to keep up - largely due to the preference for a patronage system favoring political experts on a rotating basis instead of a permanent professional civil service system.
Defective Materials could be the overarching problem
Most or all of what you said is probably true - at least with respect to inadequately protecting a bolt like this from corrosion. However, this construction was only a couple of years old. Surely any decent steel bolt (perhaps a galvanized one?) could be expected to last longer than that under those conditions.
I think we need to talk about a bolt like that just going bad, and the MBTA's rail ties going bad. While it is absolutely possible that poor design (designs not calling for strong enough materials) or poor oversight (not ensuring that you got what the engineers called for) could have played a role in each of these debacles, I think that it is more likely that the problem is elsewhere.
Defective materials - not necessarily management or oversight could very well be the culprit here (surely none of us would say that MWRA, MBTA or any other state agency/authority should have its employees overseeing the actual manufacture, in the factories, of every piece of material that goes into a public project, right?).
Ask any reputable builder who takes pride in his/her work, and they will tell you that so many building materials on the market are subpar but they are forced to use them because owners are hell-bent on limiting cost before anything else. They don't care if it will fall down in 10 years, because they'll have made their money by then, will be gone, and it will be someone else's problem. Combine this with politicians with the same kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality (who by the way, take their cues from an electorate that has developed the same mentality), and it should be no wonder this sort of thing happens.
My sense is that the old adages are as true as ever: you get what you pay for and they don't make things like they used to.
Until the collective decision is taken that we want to be proud of our public works (and that we are willing to pay what it takes to build such works), we will continue to get crappy projects. I am not, however, optimistic in this regard, because as I alluded to above, most people do the least to just get by so why should we expect anything better from the population at large?
Failed coupling was a Type II Depend-O-Lok
No word if Arthur Dent or Ford Prefect installed it.
42
So Adam, I'm assuming you're observing the holiday today...
If this coupling was bad ...
... aren't there likely to be others? How and when will the MWRA find and fix the others, without disrupting our water supply again?
It sounds as if a combination of
bad glue, crappy bolts, and shoddy workmanship came into play when the piece of Big Dig Tunnel ceiling that fell on top of a car and killed a Jamaica Plain woman. Brrrrrrr! I still get creeped out when I go through any of the Big Dig Tunnels, and try to avoid them whenever possible, but I guess that's just me.