Soil woes delay 95 project

Jeff Schweers

Tuesday, Aug. 12, 1997 | 8:58 a.m.

The Ann Road interchange at U.S. 95 is already five months behind schedule and won't be completed until December or January, the Nevada Department of Transportation said.

The $15.7 million project, scheduled for completion in 18 months, was supposed to have been ready in June, officials said Monday.

But Max Riggs Construction Co., the chief contractor on the site, said soil compaction problems have caused delays that have cost the company over $126,000 in damage assessments through July.

"That will all come out in the wash when they have the opportunity to address the assessments," NDOT spokeswoman Jeanne Corcoran said. "When any contractor is assessed damages there is a period of review and analysis. They can present materials at that time."

If the contractor keeps up the current rate of progress, the Ann Road and Rancho Drive sections could be completed by the end of August, Corcoran said. The Lone Mountain overpass portion of the project should be done by the end of the year, she said.

"That means the whole project will be a total of six months behind," Corcoran said.

Eddie Riggs, secretary-treasurer of Max Riggs, said the delays would not have occurred had the state not required the company to use soil from a related detention basin project for fill for the road project.

"When we started to do the work out there the material that was mandated to be used we turned out having trouble getting compaction out of it," Riggs said. "The material took extraordinary efforts and time to get the compaction they were requiring."

About 200,000 yards of dirt came out of the Rancho Drive detention basin, Riggs said, all of which was used as fill under the new Ann Road and the new bridges and ramps.

The soil wouldn't compact because it didn't have enough rock in it, and was like working with clay-injected beach sand, Riggs said.

The company has put in a formal written claim with the state asking for more time and money to offset the estimated millions it cost the company to compact the soil, Riggs said.

Ironically, Riggs said, the state is now paying extra for the company to haul soil from the Snow Mountain pit for the remainder of the project.

That money is compensation for having to travel extra miles to get soil, Corcoran said.

"If the shrinkage is greater than expected and they exhaust the supply at the soil source, which they did, and have to go to another site, they get an overhaul fee," Corcoran said. "It's built into all the contracts."