Caltrans Refuses to Turn Over Welds to Senate Panel

Caltrans is refusing to turn over welds removed from the Orange Crush, provoking a tussle with a state Senate panel investigating the safety of the Santa Ana interchange, the state’s fifth busiest.

State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) last week requested X-rays and the actual welds taken from the bridges that connect the Santa Ana, Orange and Garden Grove freeways, saying he wanted an independent expert to review the work. But instead of providing welds from those bridges, Caltrans supplied samples from the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles.

“I was livid to discover that Caltrans had not provided welds from the Orange Crush,” Dunn said Tuesday after a transportation oversight hearing in Downey. “I have not given up on this issue. I want an outside expert to look at the Orange Crush welds.”

A Caltrans official said the agency will not turn over the welds because questions about the work may lead to arbitration or a lawsuit against the contractor. The welds would become critical evidence if Caltrans were to sue Kiewit Pacific, the Nebraska-based company responsible for the $85-million Orange Crush construction project.

Releasing evidence prematurely could hinder Caltrans’ case, and that would not be in taxpayers’ best interest, said Jim Drago, Caltrans state spokesman.

“If the Legislature wants it, they can subpoena us,” Drago said. “We have a responsibility as stewards of taxpayers’ money to make sure their interests are protected and so that the case is presented in its entirety, not based on bits and pieces.”

Dunn said he still wants an outside review of the welds. The Senate panel, which is planning a second hearing on the weld issue for early November, will have little choice but to issue a subpoena if Caltrans refuses to cooperate, he said.

Caltrans became concerned about the Orange Crush welds earlier this year after tests showed that one in eight broke at pressures lower than they were designed to hold. Fifty-six welds were tested. Based on those results, the agency decided to replace 700 welds in the horizontal hoops in 18 columns--work that officials say will begin in December or January and cost at least $1.8 million.

The Orange Crush bridges are part of a statewide review of 299 spans built or seismically retrofitted since January 1993. The use of welding soared during the retrofitting project. Caltrans launched the weld review in 1996 after a state inspector at the Mission Valley interchange of Interstate 8 and Interstate 805 in San Diego declared dozens of welds deficient.

Caltrans has eliminated all but eight bridges from the list of 299. Those still under review are six Orange Crush bridges and two at the Golden State Freeway’s Antelope Valley interchange near Santa Clarita in northern Los Angeles County.

After a Times report documenting the problems, Dunn decided to investigate the Orange Crush welds more thoroughly to ensure public safety.

Dunn said that Caltrans’ statements appear to be contradictory. On one hand, the agency says the bridges are safe--but the welds are deficient enough for Caltrans to consider suing the contractor.

“Those two positions seem inconsistent,” Dunn said.

Caltrans engineers insist the bridges are safe. Though some of the Orange Crush welds are defective, the structures are strong enough to endure the daily pounding of traffic, the agency has said. In addition, Caltrans’ chief bridge engineer says the structures would not collapse in a Northridge-size earthquake.

The Orange Crush, completed in May 1996, was designed to withstand a 6.5-magnitude earthquake. The January 1994 Northridge temblor was magnitude 6.7.

State Sen. Betty Karnette (D-Long Beach) said the issue comes down to meeting standards set by Caltrans.

Work on the Orange Crush “didn’t create safety problems, but we also didn’t get taxpayers the quality of work they paid for,” Karnette said at Tuesday’s hearing.

Structural engineer Brian McDonald, who reviewed the welds from Harbor Freeway bridges, said any qualified inspector who examined X-rays of the work would have noticed the problems.

“The weld flaws were big enough that they should have been rejected if they were inspected,” he said.

Much of what Caltrans has done since first discovering the problems has been appropriate, he said, and the agency has made strides in preventing a repeat of the quality-control breakdown by changing several of its policies.