MTA Foot-Dragging Could Prove Expensive

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has failed to obtain permission from county and federal regulators to dig twin subway tunnels under the Los Angeles River in North Hollywood, a potentially costly slip-up that has pitted the agency in an unusual high-stakes race against its own tunneling contractor, according to documents and sources familiar with the project.

If the MTA does not obtain a permit from the county Department of Public Works to dig beneath the cement-lined flood-control channel before miners reach the river in two to three weeks, the agency could be obligated to pay the idled excavation firm more than $50,000 a day in a variety of costs associated with the delay of work.

An MTA construction executive said Tuesday that he expected to receive the permit by Friday. But a spokeswoman for the Public Works department said her agency had not even received a completed application from the MTA yet.

The spokeswoman, Donna L. Guyovich, said the engineering analysis required to safeguard the river channel from the potentially dangerous effects of subsidence or cracks would normally take six to eight weeks to complete, but would be expedited in this case.

“We know that any delay could run into a great deal of money on the MTA’s part, so we want to be cooperative with them,” she said. “But if we are not in total agreement with their proposal to mitigate potential damage, then it could be two weeks or longer before we issue a permit.”

The rush would not have been necessary, all sides agree, if the MTA had taken steps to obtain the permit sooner from the county, which is advised on changes to the river by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the North Hollywood section of the flood-control channel in the 1930s and remains partly responsible for its upkeep.

The MTA notified the county of its intention to dig beneath the flood-control channel in July 1994, according to records. But the authority did not respond to questions raised in response in September 1994 by county and federal engineers about the potential effects of tunneling for a year and a half--until finally asking for its first meeting on the permit just last month.

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“They were behind the eight ball at that point because they realized that they hadn’t addressed our real concerns about possible damage to our structure,” said Lowell Flannery, chief of engineering evaluations for the Corps. “It was a very significant oversight on their part.”

An MTA official acknowledged that the permit was neglected, but minimized the risk of delay.

“The bottom line is we should have gotten it sooner,” said Michael Gonzalez, deputy executive officer for construction at the MTA. “But in a project this size you need 100 different permits. The fact that we have not received this one yet will not delay the job.”

Problems associated with tunneling have raised concerns over the possible effect of subway construction on the Los Angeles River.

Cracks have appeared in the floors and walls of buildings along Lankershim Boulevard in the wake of Metro Rail Red Line tunneling by contractor Obayashi Corp. since January--and the MTA has promised to fix them without accepting liability. In April, the MTA announced that a stretch of the Hollywood Freeway had sunk 3.79 inches above subway tunneling in Studio City--and the agency was forced to stop digging and repave the freeway in an operation estimated so far to cost $375,000.

But Guyovich said those consequences pale in comparison to the devastation that could occur if a heavy volume of storm water undermines crack-weakened cement on the floor of the L.A. River and floods the heavily commercial area.

All of the water from storm drains in the San Fernando Valley funnels through that channel on its way to the sea. Engineers said the liquid load it carries during heavy storms weighs up to 100 times more than the load of traffic on Lankershim or the Hollywood Freeway.

“Water has a tremendous force. It can move slabs of concrete,” Guyovich said. “If the channel doesn’t function as designed because of cracks or subsidence, the water could be diverted to adjacent properties, causing a great deal of damage.”

Added Flannery, a Corps civil engineer: “A 3-inch settlement in the middle of the channel could cause very strange things to happen to the flow of water. It’s hard to model. It’s an unknown.”

The Corps’ engineering permits chief, David Weaver, said fear of the unknown had sparked a tense moment in his negotiations with the MTA. He said an authority official had told him at a meeting earlier this month that he did not “anticipate” significant settlement above the subway tunnel but acknowledged there was potential for some.

“I held up a couple of newspaper articles about settlement at the Hollywood Freeway and said, ‘You see this? We’re concerned about what we’re reading here. I don’t like the word ‘anticipate,’ ” recalled Weaver.

Guyovich said negotiations with the MTA now center on assurances that the authority will repair any cracks or subsidence caused before the next rainy season, which officially begins Oct. 15. She said the county and Corps also want the MTA to closely monitor the channel for the next two to three years to determine whether a maximum load of water would cause cracks.

While application negotiations continue, contractor Obayashi Corp. has chafed at the amount of time the MTA has demanded it take to inject chemical grout into the sandy soil just north of the river, according to correspondence obtained by The Times.

A source said that the contractor had privately complained to associates that the firm believes it has been ordered by the MTA to stop tunneling and to grout 920 feet short of the river for the past six weeks because the MTA was trying to buy time until the permit was finalized.

In an April 23 letter to the MTA, Carl R. Linden, the contractor’s project manager, wrote: “We have ‘gotten wind’ that some agency . . . is requiring that the authority obtain a permit for mining under the L.A. River and that a study must be made in order to get that permit. Though the thought of this being an actuality is rather bazaar [sic], we note that mining operations have been halted by the Authority on what we consider to be an increasingly frequent basis that suggests there may be some substance to the ‘wind that has blown.’ ”

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In a written reply to Obayashi on April 24, the authority’s construction manager on the Lankershim Boulevard project, Parsons-Dillingham, dismissed the notion that the grouting and lack of permit were linked. The MTA maintains that the extremely costly, noisy grouting has taken so long at that spot because the ground there makes a transition from loose, sandy soil to a more solid formation known as Topanga mudstone.

“The mining operations have been halted because of the additional grouting operations,” wrote Dwight Chewning, resident engineer for Parsons. “The additional grouting and issuance of the L.A. River permit are unrelated issues.”

If the MTA must ask Obayashi to halt tunneling again while it waits for permission to dig beneath the river, excavation experts say the contractor could dun the agency more than $50,000 a day in the cost of idled equipment and staff.

* ON TRACK: MTA panel approves Valley rail plans. B6