The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers gave the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge a thumbs up this week after halting further work on it earlier this year from concerns that its support piers could compromise and damage the Trinity River floodway system. With this approval, the prospects for other potentially troublesome aspects of the Trinity River Corridor project seem brighter, too.

Over the months, the change of heart of the corp seems to have come from two sources. One source was a series of proposed solutions from the Texas Department of Transportation addressing the corp’s concerns and the possibility that water could seep into the levees from the piers being used to support the 40-story bridge.

Among the changes approved by the corps:

Among the changes required by the corps are requirements that:

• The east and west levees must be raised under the bridge.
• A seepage berm must be built on the west levee.
• A two-tiered berm must be built to reinforce the levee slope on the east levee
• A seepage collar must be built around three existing bridge piers and an Oncor electrical tower.

Costs given for the estimated repairs have been estimated at $500,000.

The second source of comforting the corp’s concerns was a geological study the conducted on the sand around the area of the piers. They found that area only had pockets of sand within its borders, rather than a continuous layer; thereby being much less troublesome in nature.

In spite of this approval, Kevin Craig, director of the Trinity project for the corps said that future request to build into the levees, including the planned toll road, will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Since the corps adopted more stringent levee standards after New Orleans suffered under Hurricane Katrina, City Hall has been afraid that any future construction that affected the levees would be prohibited.

Dallas still faces a mandate to make significant repairs and upgrades to the levees that protect Dallas from catastrophic flooding.

Mr. Craig said,

“It all hinges on studying technical details and figuring out how things can be resolved.”

Council member Angela Hunt, a long time opponent to the planned high-speed tollway said,

“In recent conversations with the corps leadership, I was assured that the corps understands that Dallas residents rely on our levees to protect us from catastrophic flooding, and that they kept this fact in mind when they approved the plans for the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge approaches.”