Controversial Cooper Bridge Project Nears Completion

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Construction is now all but finished at the Cooper Street bridge. While officials at Meadow Valley Construction, the bridge’s contractor, don’t expect to have the final sign off on the project finished until early next month, they have reported that most of the major work is complete on the community’s largest public works project this year.
“The structure of the bridge is all done, the approach has been paved and striped and the concrete channel is complete,” said Jed Wheeler of Meadow Valley. “Now we are down to just a few remaining punch list items that have to be cleaned up”

If all goes well, Wheeler said the final completion should be around July 9.
Wheeler said that his company is proud of how the project has turned out. The design of the $13.6 million bridge itself presented some interesting challenges in its construction, Wheeler said.

First, the foundation of the bridge structure had to be placed into the water table itself. Wheeler explained that crews had to drill 70 feet into the ground to set the footings of the bridge.
“There is some significant difficulty in working down in the water table that way,” Wheeler said.

In addition, the company built a new concrete channel that constitutes a flood control structure below the bridge. Wheeler explained that the channel is possibly the widest concrete-lined trapezoidal channel in Clark County. At it’s widest point the channel is 250 feet and it spans a segment of the river about 1,300 feet long.

To construct the channel the company had to build a bypass through which the river could flow while construction in the natural river bottom was being completed. This included running the river flow through a stretch of 60 inch pipe around the construction project.
“It has ended up to be a very good looking project,” Wheeler said of the bridge and channel. “I feel like it is a nice feather in the company’s hat.”

Of course, few construction projects proceed from start to finish without some unforeseen complications. And the Cooper Bridge project had more than its share of those! In September last year, seemingly at the worst possible moment in the project, a series of major flooding events hit the Moapa Valley region.

A substantial flood event occurred on August 19. But Meadow Valley officials were able to make advance preparations to prevent any major damage to the construction infrastructure.

Then on September 9 the community was hit by a huge storm and accompanying flood that washed out the I-15 between the Glendale and Logandale/Overton exits, flooded the Reid Gardner Power Station knocking out power to the entire OPD area and caused major flooding to homes and property throughout the Moapa Valley communities.

Unfortunately, there was little that Meadow Valley could do to prevent damage to their construction project in this event. The flood put the project under water, washing away much of the stream bypass infrastructure as well as extensive dirt work that had been done in the channel. It left a thick layer of mud and silt throughout the construction zone that had to be cleaned out. Finally, It eroded the temporary shorings on the bridge structure, but it fortunately didn’t damage the superstructure of the bridge itself. Needless to say, this was a major setback to the project.

In the days following the flood, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval declared the affected region a disaster area which qualified it for federal aid. Wheeler and other Meadow Valley officials appealed to Clark County and other federal agencies for assistance in recovering some of its costs caused by the flood. Unfortunately, no aid would come for the company.

“We thought we had a pretty good chance of getting some help,” Wheeler said. “Some entities in town received money to help in their cleanup efforts. But we didn’t. So we ended up taking a big hit on the project.”
Despite all of the setbacks, though, Wheeler was proud that the company has been able to see the project through to completion.

“The good thing is that the project will be completed now and the community will benefit from it,” he said. “Despite the problems that we encountered in the flood, it did show one thing: that the project helps the neighborhood at Cooper Street. This flood didn’t seem to hit them as hard as it might have without the channel project being there; even partially finished.”

While many of the residents along Cooper Street in Overton are likewise viewing the new bridge project as a great benefit to the neighborhood, some of the residents who are closest to the project are less sure about its benefits.

Bruce and Nancy Perkins, as well as Bud and Carol Webber, have had more opportunity than most to consider the fine details of the Cooper Crossing project. Both families live on property that is up close and personal to the new bridge. The Perkins live in a home on a parcel just east of the project. The Webbers live on a five acres just across the river from the Perkins to the west. Both families were required to sell portions of their land, which included the river bottom and its banks, in order to make way for the bridge and flood control infrastructure beneath it.

Giving up that prized riverfront property was a sacrifice for both families. Nancy Perkins looks out the front window of her home and wistfully describes the dense green foliage that used to screen her front yard from the view of the street. Now there is a clear sightline to the road and cement bridge from the house. And the foreground view from the Perkins’ front porch is a wide landscape of gray concrete channel.

“You used to couldn’t be able to even see our house because there were so many trees on our property,” Nancy Perkins said. “And it was such a beautiful little spot down there. After they started the project and cleared out all the vegetation, all of a sudden our neighbors across the river kept saying, ‘Nancy, we can see your house now!’”

Bud Webber used to have a beautiful green pasture along the west river bank next to his house. He kept a few alpaca llamas there which used to graze quietly in that spot. It was a novelty to see in Moapa Valley. But that pastoral scene has since disappeared. The little field was bladed back to make way for an access road and a concrete retention wall under the bridge.

And the project has bled over onto improvements that Webber had hoped to retain on his own property. “We had a row of willow trees right along the property line,” Webber said. “But all the excavating has undercut the bank and we couldn’t keep water on them. We’ve pretty much lost them all.”

Still, both neighbors realize that these things were merely the price to be paid for the new flood control infrastructure. And, in general, they welcome the improvements that the project have promised.
“We are not against making it better down there,” said Bruce Perkins. “There needs to be something done down there; and it has been needed for a long time now.”

Both property owners made it clear that their issue was not that they had been required to sell their land and had seen such dramatic change to it. Rather it is that they fear that so little real change was accomplished by their sacrifice and by the huge cost to taxpayers in this project.

Both adjacent property owners feel that the project has been badly designed, is too expensive, and in the end, doesn’t accomplish what is really needed from a flood control perspective.
“The whole project is a fiasco,” Webber said. “They didn’t need to spend $13 million on a bridge to solve a lot of the flooding issues in the Cooper Street area.”

Both neighbors are careful not to lay any blame on Meadow Valley Construction for the perceived failings. Rather they fault the county engineers for the project’s design.
“Meadow Valley has been good to work with and have pulled for us all along,” said Bruce Perkins. “They have done a great job considering what they have had to deal with over the past year. But they’re hands are kind of tied, we know that. They have to follow the design that they are given. And I think there are problems with that design.”

Perkins said that, early on, he had tried to reason with county engineers and planner about what needed to be done to alleviate flooding in the Cooper Street neighborhood.
“We told them in the beginning that they could take care of most of the flood problems if they could just go in and clear out that river bottom,” he said. “If they just cut down and removed all those thick growths of tamarisk and other vegetation, and keep it clear; that all by itself would take care of most of the issue in this neighborhood. And it would be so much cheaper than what the’ve done.”

But the response from county officials was that they couldn’t do that. “They said that they couldn’t touch the existing river bottom because it was the waters of the U.S. and they weren’t allowed to make changes to it,” Perkins said

“But look at what they have done out there!” he added pointing at the huge new cement channel. “Somehow they got permits to completely cement over the channel. What a waste of money! For all the millions they are spending they are not really solving the problems.”

Perkins points further down stream, to a place a couple hundred yards below where the concrete ends. Above that point, the channel has been excavated down to make it deeper for the length of the bridge project and to send flood water flowing fast under the bridge. But down at the end of the project, the excavation ends and the river bottom steps back up to its previous natural depth. This means that flood water will be dammed up there as it builds up elevation to return to the natural channel, Perkins said.

“The first time it floods down here, the whole thing will back up and be filled with silt,” Perkins said. “Crews will have to spend two weeks coming in and clearing it all out. How efficient is that?”
“It’s just not a fix to the problem,” added Nancy Perkins. “Instead of flooding down Cooper Street and through people’s front door, it will most likely back up further down the river and flood into their back doors.”

And for all the money spent on the bridge, the Perkins point out that it will be doing nothing for the people in the neighborhoods just to the south of Overton who get flooded repeatedly.
“We feel just awful for those people down stream from us who are underwater everytime we have a flood go through,” Nancy Perkins said. “It’s just too bad some of this money wasn’t used to do more real flood control in more areas.”

Clark County staff has been clear all along that the Cooper bridge project is only one component in a much larger 10-year flood control plan which encompasses nearly the entire length of the lower Moapa Valley. They explain that the county has spent millions of dollars over many years in acquiring the necessary rights-of-way along the river. As funding becomes available, additional phases of the project will be constructed to address other areas of frequent flooding, they say.