Rumor overreaches truth, according to Corps

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LCNN - 9-17-2009 at 10:11 PM

Russell Springs Times Journal - "This is nonsense," said Daniel Koziol "He is here working today. You can come down and see for yourself."

Koziol, an engineer for the contractor on repairs to Wolf Creek Dam Triviicos Soultanchie said the rumors were wild exaggerations.

"People were even asking me about it in the office," said David Hendrix, project leader on the dam repair at the Nashville office of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The rampant rumor spreading was that falsifications of records on the dam project were cause for dismissal, warnings for people not to leave the country and possible criminal charges, not to mention dire possibilities for the delays and risk to the stability of the repairs.

Hendrix said Corps officials had questioned some reports and that an internal audit by the contractor had found that two technicians had, "entered some erroneous data to show that work was within quality control criteria."

He said those workers were no longer working on the site, but an unfortunate coincidence had lead to rumors regarding two others at the job.

Those two men, as Hendrix referred to them, are moving to other projects for their company. He reiterated that the two people in management were not being transferred because of anything related to this incident.

"We think the contractor has taken the appropriate action -We're happy with how they handled this situation," Hendrix said.

"Naturally we're not happy that it occurred but they have dealt with it."

He said that there are no plans for legal action against the technicians and that the company is continuing with an audit of all the work done to date.

He said that any problems will be corrected. The "erroneous data" was on placement of the protective concrete wall, called the PCW, in what is known as the technique area.

That is the area the contractor is to use for testing and perfecting the method they will use for drilling and poring the barrier wall into the dam.

Hendrix said their concern was with the alignment, particularly a possible twist, in the bottom of that protective wall, as it entered the first layers of rock at the bottom of the earthen fill portion of the dam.

The final barrier wall is drilled through the PCW and deep into the bedrock below. The purpose of the PCW is to keep the pressures from that work from affecting the integrity of the earthen portion of the dam.

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