NEWSLETTER

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President's Message
Feature Article
Project Spotlight
2016 Sponsorships
Industry News
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December 10, 2015
Southern AZ Branch Holiday Mixer
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December 14, 2015
Holiday Party and
Board Installation of Officers
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 PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Here it is the holiday season and the year is drawing to a close.  There are quite a few changes occurring in the APWA organization.  As you might remember, the Congress has been renamed and re-branded the PWX Expo.  This change was initiated right here in Arizona at this year’s Congress.  Hopefully, you all attended the Congress as it will be quite some years before it occurs here again.  The feedback from attendees has been very good and everyone enjoyed the event.  

In addition, there have been many other changes that have already happened and many to come this next year.  There is only the December holiday party and swearing in of officers left for this year.  I hope you will register and attend.  It is at Aunt Chilada’s on the 14^th at 3 PM.  We scheduled it early, so that you can attend, and still make it home for family time in the evening.

Some additional changes that are ongoing are:  the election of officers, reorganization of the fiscal year (that will occur gradually over the next calendar year), changes in the strategic plan that will result in some differences in the Chapter’s committees (to focus the chapter and create more feedback from the committees), and of course, the Statewide Annual Conference in August in Tucson. 

All of this promises to be very interesting and will reflect the wishes of the new Board.  I will be turning the gavel over to the new President, Loretta Flick on December 14^th.  That will end my Presidency and I must say, it has been quite an adventure.  I did not foresee the amount of effort and time that it takes to be the President.   My efforts, next year, will be on some projects that are getting underway.  I will spend most of my time travelling and working on these efforts. 

As for APWA, I have enjoyed getting to know all of you.   Thanks for the opportunity to be your President.  Thanks to all of you!

Sincerely,
John Hauskins
ARIZONA CHAPTER PRESIDENT 

FEATURE ARTICLE

This article was written for Governing and is being reprinted with permission by Alex Marshall.

Why the Word "Infrastructure" Replaced "Public Works"

I teach a course on infrastructure at the New Jersey School of Architecture in Newark, which offers a master’s degree in infrastructure planning. Harvard’s Graduate School of Design has the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure. Meanwhile, planners and architects talk about “green infrastructure,” and presidential candidates debate the merits of an “infrastructure bank.”

But this word “infrastructure,” which I just managed to use five times in one paragraph without explanation, was not in common discourse 35 years ago in the U.S. and was just about unknown 50 years ago. Where did it come from, and what does its rise mean?

First of all, let’s put some evidence behind my claim. Using Google’s Ngram Viewer, one can search millions of books published over the last two centuries for the prevalence of words or terms. This miraculous tool shows that, in English at least, “infrastructure” was hardly used until about 1960, after which it climbed steadily, taking off after 1980.

Another Google search, this time of books published in French, shows the word beginning to be used in that language in the 1880s, and thereafter being employed at a steady rate before exploding in usage in the 1940s after World War II. This data appears to confirm what I have read elsewhere, which is that “infrastructure” was originally a French word, one that first made its appearance in railroad planning in France in the late 19th century. Military planners with NATO began using it in Europe, and it then gradually migrated over to civilian usage. But it was still several decades before even professionals outside of Europe began using the term.

A search of Google Books shows that references to "infrastructure" have increased dramatically over the past 50 years, while published uses of "public works" have declined.

Why, you may be asking at this point, should we care? After all, it’s just a word. But words, of course, are powerful things, and as they change so do our perceptions of what they represent. For me, the way this new word rose up and replaced older terms like “public works” is interesting and significant. Building roads and bridges where none existed before -- “public works” -- is one thing. Viewing such projects as interconnected, mutually dependent systems that move us from place to place and serve as a primary engine of commerce -- “infrastructure” -- is quite another. “The emergence of ‘infrastructure’ as a generic concept and prominent item on the public agenda is a phenomenon of the eighties,” wrote Alan Altshuler, former secretary of transportation for Massachusetts, in a 1989 book review for The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

You can see that emergence onto the public agenda pretty clearly with another dive into the archives. In searching The New York Times’ past articles, I found that the word “infrastructure” appeared just one time in 1950, then 19 times in 1960 and 27 times in 1970. Most of these occurrences were for specialized purposes that did not really conform to modern usage.

In 1980, the term was used in the Times 134 times, and that was the first year I found it being used in the way we do today. For example, Clyde Haberman reported on a proposal for the New York City Economic Development Corp., writing that one official had said “he had no objection to an agency to deal only with rebuilding the city’s infrastructure.” Haberman then felt the need to define the word as “a bureaucratic term for such projects as bridges, sewers and roads.” Time marched on. The term occurred 335 times in the Times in 1990, 727 times in 2000 and a whopping 5,357 times in 2014. Clearly, “infrastructure” had come into its own.

By comparison, “public works” was gradually declining in popularity. It was used 754 times in the Times in 1940, 554 times in 1980, 246 times in 1981 and just 184 times in 2000. “Infrastructure” had shoved “public works” almost out of the arena of public discourse. Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, titled his 1970 autobiography Public Works: A Dangerous Trade. Today Moses would be talking about “infrastructure.” Personally I prefer “public works” because it has both “public” and “work” in it, a combination that economically describes both what we build and who it benefits. But while I dislike the bureaucratic sound of “infrastructure,” it really is a useful term for a broader view of these systems. In my last book, The Surprising Design of Market Economies, I use it to describe not only roads, power lines and water pipes, but also systems of law, policing and education that societies and business operate within.

Whatever you call these systems, building, nurturing and managing them has always been inherently political and controversial because they represent the public coming together to do something collectively. Some of the largest debates in our country’s history have turned on them, and still do.

In the early 19th century, the drive to build canals, ports, dams and roads, spearheaded by the brilliant Albert Gallatin under President Thomas Jefferson, was known as “internal improvements.” Debates over internal improvements were one of the causes of the Civil War: Southern planters opposed them because they feared that public investments in systems like railroads, particularly when accompanied by giving away Western land to settlers, would build a “free labor” system that would make slave labor less viable. Congress passed the national railroad and homestead acts in 1862 only after the South had left the Union and so could not block their passage.

Putting aside civil wars, infrastructure projects require, in a democracy at least, some measure of consensus to move forward. Generating that consensus is difficult, particularly in our system of government where localities, states and the feds operate almost independently of one another. But it’s a good fight to have, choosing what projects we put our collective will into -- whatever one calls them.

Alex Marshall is the transportation columnist for GOVERNING and a Senior Fellow at The Regional Plan Association in New York City. His most recent book is The Surprising Design of Market Economies.

PROJECT SPOTLIGHT

US 89 Bitter Springs Landslide Repair 

Submitted by Kleinfelder, Tempe AZ

Renewed movement of the active landslide in the slopes of Echo Cliffs on February 20, 2013, resulted in large cracks and the collapse of US 89 highway that required immediate closure of the road between the Bitter Springs community and Page in Northern Arizona. The highway was closed to all travel except emergency vehicles for two years which had a major impact to the social and economic conditions and quality of life in Northern Arizona.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The Bitter Springs landslide is a unique geologic feature present in the steep slopes of the Echo Cliffs, located approximately 20 miles south of Page, Arizona. US Highway 89 at this location crosses over this landslide mass as it gradually climbs up the grade from the lower Kaibab plateau to the upper Kaibito Plateau and passes up and over the Echo Cliffs, which separates the two plateau levels. The Google 2013 image (left) shows the geographic features. The ancient landslide mass that slumped off the steep cliffs in the geologic past provided a topography that facilitated construction of a road up to the upper plateau. The traveling public, which includes local residents, tourists and commercial traffic, heavily rely upon use of US 89 to access Page and the Lake Powell area.   On February 20, 2013, a portion of the old landslide mass reactivated resulting in the development of a new head scarp across the road (right photo) that required closure of US89 and severely restricted the mobility of the traveling public in northern Arizona. 

With the limited mobility of travel in northern Arizona, as a result of this slide and road closure, ADOT supported by FHWA contracted Kleinfelder and AECOM on an emergency basis to develop an assessment of the cause of the landslide and to provide remedial engineering design solutions to repair the roadway and re-open to traffic as quickly as possible. The active landslide occurred along a 500-foot-long section of US89 displacing all travel lanes with a vertical drop of about 4.5 feet. The unique aspects and challenges associated with the project included using many different investigative methods to help understand the complex subsurface geology controlling the failure. The final stages of the project included safe construction of the remedial repairs on an active slide particularly since the slide would not be stabilized until the primary movement mitigating feature (gravity buttress) was completed. 

• Kleinfelder’s role on this project was to provide a Geotechnical and Geologic assessment of the damage and to develop a remedial repair to stabilize the landslide. The services included a geologic assessment of the ancient and active slide and design of remedial repair options. The geologic assessment included completion of a subsurface exploration program by multiple methods, instrumentation installations within borings for monitoring underground movements of the slide, surficial geologic mapping, aerial reconnaissance, surface and crack inspection and monitoring.
• AECOM played a significant role through the development of design plans, construction specifications and cost estimates for the project.  
• FNF Construction was procured under a CMAR delivery mode contract and worked closely with the design team to develop construction phasing and sequencing plans.
• ADOT administered all work on the project including communications with the Navajo Nation and residents of nearby towns including Bitter Springs, Marble Canyon and Page.  All design and related work was supervised by their design manager, Michael Andazola, PE, and all construction was overseen by their resident engineer, Steve Monroe, PE. The project was administered by the ADOT Flagstaff District and District Engineer Audra Merrick, PE.

Uniqueness & Use of Multiple Exploration Techniques
The greatest challenge on this project was to understand the geology and the geometry of the landslide mass along with the driving forces that continued to result in movement of the active slide. The approach to the project was to collect surficial and subsurface data using multiple methods to understand the geology and geotechnical properties of the various deposits, inclusive of the ancient and active slide. Understanding the ancient landslide was important as the remedial design included earthmoving activities within the ancient slide and the team did not want to initiate movement of the larger ancient slide. The field methods listed below were uniquely applied to this project to gain a broader understanding of causes of the ancient slide and ascertain why only the lower portion of the old slide mass has continued to move since the beginning of construction of the roadway in 1957:

• Geologic mapping and helicopter reconnaissance;
• Subsurface drilling using truck, track and helicopter compatible portable drills to quickly access drill sites in the steep site topography without the need for road building (See Exhibit 3 for an initial boring plan layout and Exhibits 4-6 show the various drill rig set ups);
• Geophysical surveys including refraction and ReMi;
• Installation of instrumentation to monitor surface and subsurface ground movement, including slope inclinometers and time domain reflectometers (TDR) which can indicate shear depths based on electrical resistance and are capable of extending the life of the downhole probe even after the inclinometer is no longer accessible if it begins to shear;
• Downhole Optical Televiewer was also attempted in some borings, but was not successful within the disturbed landslide materials;
• Rock coring; and
• Laboratory testing of rock strengths. 

In addition to the above field methods, a unique application included development of a geologic model to unfold an understanding of the development of the historic landslide mass on the slopes of the Echo Cliff and the geologic process driving the active failure, which represents a small portion of the larger historic slide in order to design a remedial repair that addressed and resisted the driving forces. In this case understanding the landslide mass geometry and driving forces was crucial for a long term repair solution.


Complexity
One of the greatest challenges on this project was the complexity of the landslide mass. A geologic model of the ancient slide was developed to understand the process of the larger landslide. This was important to understand since the remedial repair would require excavation of a part of the ancient landslide in order to produce local cost effective material to build the gravity buttress needed to stabilize the lower active slide. Understanding that the ancient landslide was deep seated allowed for a reasonable assumption that removal of portions of the larger slide would not destabilize and result in other areas of ground distress. The complexity was addressed during detailed geologic mapping and utilization of borehole data from the various exploration points. The unique feature of the active slide is that this landslide did not result from loading directly associated with the roadway construction. The larger ancient slide developed as a result of Echo Cliffs exposing a sedimentary rock sequence that included highly plastic clays of the Chinle Formation near the base of the slope. A translational slide occurred primarily along the Chinle clays resulting in a very large block sliding off from the cliff face. This larger ancient slide is estimated to be 300 feet thick and 1200 feet long. The geometry of the active slide lies in the lower slopes (mostly below the roadway) and the toe area is located along a drainage that runs along the toe area and essentially has resulted in continued erosion of the soft Chinle clays exposed at the toe. As the toe material progressively gets removed during ongoing weathering and erosion the toe adjusts and creeps further away from the slope.  (Exhibit 16 and photo to right.) Eventually, as the toe moves outward along the soft Chinle clays, the mass above slides in behind the shifting toe. The remedial design considered this condition and included stabilizing the toe with a gravity buttress to stop the creep-type movement and constrain the mass above the toe. 

VIEW FULL SIZE PHOTOS >

Kleinfelder, ADOT, AECOM and the FNF construction team worked together to construct a repair to the slide and reopen the roadway to the traveling public in as expedited manner as possible. The roadway re-opened on March 27, 2015.