Hurricane floodgate

Construction is under way on this $36 million floodgate to protect 250,000 people in the West Bank area of New Orleans from hurricane storm surges. It’s on the Harvey Canal, an industrial waterway that was reopened Nov. 9 after the first pile-driving work. The work’s next major feature will be to drive sheet piles for a cofferdam (temporary retaining structure) within which the structure to house the floodgates will be built. News release and hurricane project fact sheets.

   

Workers proceed with pile driving for a $36 million hurricane floodgate in the Harvey Canal in suburban New Orleans. On completion in 2006, the floodgate will help to protect the West Bank of New Orleans from storm surges during hurricanes. Most of the time, however, the gate will remain open to permit navigation. The horizontal clearance for vessels will be 125 feet.

 

Driving a pile

Air condenses into a plume of white steam as a Vulcan 020 pile-driving hammer completes one of the many cycles required to drive a pile to the design height for a hurricane floodgate, on the Harvey Canal in suburban New Orleans. The pile-driving lead (lattice-like framework) is 200 feet long and serves as a track along which the pile-driving hammer runs and as a guide for positioning and steadying a pile as it is driven. It is suspended from the 250-foot-boom of a barge-mounted Manitowoc 4100 Ringer Crane. 

  

Awaiting Burial

Piles await a long life in the bottom of the Harvey Canal as the supports for a $36 million hurricane floodgate. The piles are two feet in diameter and 130 to 133 feet long. An employee of Boh Bros. Construction Co., the floodgate contractor, is at work atop the piles. A total of 72 piles were driven in October and November 2004.