Hero Canal Levee and Pump Station

A key section of the HSDRRS was the West Bank and Vicinity (WBV), an area with serious risk of flooding even during moderate rainstorms and devastation during hurricanes. To protect the community, USACE called for the Levee Enlargement and Pumping Station (WBV-09b Project) to be built along the Hero Canal, a water corridor used regularly for commercial traffic servicing the local surrounding businesses.

Conti Federal’s 50-person project team constructed and installed T-wall retaining structures up to the canal edge as well as concrete structures holding a bulkhead gate put in place by a permanent fixed-mounted crane in the event of a hurricane or other emergency weather event. The huge bulkhead structure was formed and poured inside a large cofferdam, a temporary retaining structure in the middle of Hero Canal. Conti Federal constructed a bypass channel to keep the canal open to navigable traffic during construction, installed a small pump station and motor control house for runoff water from the protected side of the levee to the flood side and degraded an existing earthen levee to the protected side of the levee and T-wall system.

Conti Federal worked on a very aggressive schedule to complete the project milestone of 100-year flood protection.

Key features of the project included:

• Constructed T-walls, levees, flood gates, and pump stations
• Constructed pump station and box culvert gravity drain
• Constructed 56-foot bulkhead gate
• Demolished existing utilities
• Dewatered site and built 86 ft long by 96 ft wide cofferdam
• Installed stone armoring
• Maintained water quality monitoring operations