Are shortcuts compromising safety of new 520 bridge?

Are shortcuts and pressure to meet construction deadlines compromising safety of the new 520 bridge? The $4.65 billion bridge will be open to drivers in 2014. But a KOMO 4 News investigation has uncovered serious concerns about the integrity of the pontoons that are supposed to keep the bridge afloat.

On August 22, WSDOT inspectors found problems inside two of its new 520 pontoons and within five days they posted video on the internet, saying some might use it to say the pontoons were leaking but they wanted the public to have "the full story."

"There's a leak at a construction joint," a Washington State Department of Transportation inspector says in the video.

Our investigation has uncovered information indicating at least one of the pontoons is leaking, and there is insider concern that WSDOT is allowing contractor shortcuts, undermining the integrity of these pontoons -- structures that are meant to hold up the world's longest floating bridge for the next 75 years.

The problems started at the Aberdeen casting basin where 33 of the pontoons will be built, including 21 that will be longer than a football field. Last May WSDOT discovered extensive cracking and what's called spalling in the first set of pontoons. Though WSDOT has posted dozens of photos of the Aberdeen project online, it's not made public any photos of this spalling. We've found internet images from other projects that show and define spalling as flaking or chipping in concrete.

An insider with first-hand knowledge of the project contacted the Problem Solvers and told us the damage was so severe, in some cases entire wall sections were blown out.

"It's pretty disturbing to see something like that where normally that's not the type of thing we find," said John Reilly, who headed up a panel of experts hired by WSDOT.

The panel was tasked with finding what caused the pontoon damage. They discovered it was something called post-tensioning. A simplified explanation describes post-tensioning as cables or tendons that are pulled through the sections of a pontoon, with the effect of compressing and strengthening the entire structure.

WSDOT's own expert panel found that contractor Kiewit General did not follow the design drawings for placing those cables, and during that compression process, the pontoons were severely damaged. Quoting from panel's report we asked Reilly if the issue was that the construction deviated from the contract drawings. He replied, "correct."

Additionally the panel determined that contract requirements for curing the concrete "were not rigorously followed," resulting in even more cracking. Additionally, according to Reilly, "there's also the cement itself - it's a different cement - so is that a factor in this? Probably."

WSDOT and Kiewit General launched a series of repairs and in July, just before the first set of pontoons was floated out of Aberdeen, WSDOT said the pontoons were good to go. "All of the cracks had been repaired," 520 Program Director Julie Meredith told us.

Then came that August 22 inspection. In Pontoon V, a 360-foot longitudinal pontoon, inspectors found a leak at an internal construction joint. The water was coming from another cell inside the pontoon where it had been placed as temporary ballast, so the water was not coming from Lake Washington. That leak has since been repaired.

But inside Pontoon W, a 240-foot cross pontoon, there were long streaks of white. The inspector noted it, calling it "weeping," or water seeping into the pontoon from Lake Washington. Our insider tells us those white streaks are "evidence of leaking through cracks" and are "indicative of surface cracking" that has occurred since the float out.

But when we asked WSDOT's Meredith about the repairs they're planning to the pontoon and if that meant they'd found additional cracks since the float-out, she responded, "no, there's not more cracks that we've identified, that's just how we're addressing the condensation issue we have."

Condensation. In the original 30-second video that WSDOT posted online they call the moisture on the wall of Pontoon W "condensation." When the Problem Solvers filed a public information request for all video inside the pontoons on Lake Washington, WSDOT instead posted edited videos online with the audio removed.

We asked WSDOT why we weren't given complete videos and Meredith responded, "Tracy, we've given you all the videos we have and showed everything to the public."

In fact, WSDOT gave us nothing, only posting videos online, videos with the audio removed.

Only when the Problem Solvers obtained the raw videos complete with sound from another source did we hear the inspector use that critical word to describe the water he found inside Pontoon W: "some weeping," he says in the video. Weeping, not condensation.

Our insider insists WSDOT and contractor Kiewit General are "taking a lot of shortcuts," because of "pressure for the schedule." Even worse, the insider tells us that what's potentially at risk is the very integrity of the new bridge.

The insider pointed to the 1990 collapse of the eastbound I-90 bridge. Investigators in that incident found a combination of contractor error and previously identified pontoon cracks led a single pontoon to sink, subsequently pulling down multiple bridge sections. Drawing a connection to the new 520 pontoons, the insider says one cracked pontoon "can compromise the rest."

WSDOT insists the cracks in its pontoons were both expected and repairable and the pontoons will last for 75 years or longer.

"We built pontoons that are some of the best pontoons that the Department of Transportation had ever constructed," concluded 520 Program Manager Meredith.

WSDOT's expert panel was not asked to examine the leaking found after the pontoons were in Lake Washington, though Reilly says he has seen the videos. He agrees with our insider that the cracking in Aberdeen is the most logical cause of the leaks. When we asked him if that's an issue he responded, "WSDOT should be concerned about it - for them it should be, yeah."

We've also learned that everyone inside WSDOT was warned not to talk to KOMO TV about any of these issues. As for the future, WSDOT says that repairs to that one weeping pontoon will be made as needed. They add that they have made the changes recommended by their expert panel and they're confident that all the pontoons will be safe, structurally sound and last 75 years or longer.