Mr. Permanent Fix’s allegations are unsupported on several counts. First, once the URS Study was published by FEMA in December 1998, it served no further role or purpose in FEMA’s management or funding of so-called “ permanent” repairs under disaster DR-1203-CA – except in the press and by local insurgents wanting to assail the NCRA.

FEMA’s only precondition placed on future disaster funding arose through application of its so-called “Landslide Policy.” That “policy,” which has been used by FEMA for years to evade disaster funding responsibility all over California, says any location subject to repetitive landslides is not eligible for FEMA funding. [When asked if such a policy would be established for hurricanes in Florida, FEMA folks change the subject.] Anyway, it was decreed that NCRA would have to use non-federal money to stabilize some 37 sites stretching from Longvale to Fortuna, plus one on the Ridge. Stabilization of those sites was the original purpose of some $31 million included in the TCRP appropriation for the NCRA.

It is not edifying to characterize the Shannon & Wilson study as having “no real engineering calculations” and “ ‘a shoot from the hip’ report.” The study is the product of four registered professional engineers with railroad backgrounds (3 from S&W and one from NCRA’s Operator) who toured the affected areas on foot and by ATV (including use of unique ATVs equipped with “hy-rail” attachments to travel on the track) collecting GPS data, soil data. earth movement measurements, and photographs. You can’t get much closer than that. And as experienced geotechnical engineers accustomed to addressing the needs of railroad engineering departments, they saw no reason to burden their report with extraneous “filler.” Moreover, there was no need for S&W to replicate collection of data published by URS. Specific engineering details were available for review – if needed (which they weren’t).

Further, the S&W study was published in June 1999 based on field studies done in April of that year. The cost estimates were predicated on the presumption that the work would be performed by NCRA’s Operator and would be completed within a relatively short period following completion of the study. That was 8 years -- and at least one El Nino winter -- ago. Moreover, substantially all of the geotechnical work recommended by S&W was situated between Willits and Eureka. There have been no reports of any work being done in these areas. The only S&W identified geotechnical stabilization project known to have been worked on in this period was the work done at Hill Pass (MP 126.35 to MP 127.65) by the NCRA in 2002. NCRA projects now underway presumably include more than geotechnical stabilization and are being accompanied by a whole phalanx of consultants and engineers eager to maximize billings and contractors impatient to profit from large public works contracts. So, specifically, I am curious to learn what geotechnical work estimated by S&W in 1999 has been completed within the last eight years that was “2 to 5 times more in cost than estimated in that report.?”