V&A Consulting Engineers was retained by Stantec to provide corrosion engineering services for the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Permanent Canal Closures & Pump Stations Project located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The project included the design and construction of three pump stations intended to discharge water from the city into Lake Pontchartrain in the event of flooding. A steel bulkhead structure was installed at each pump station to convey water from existing canals to the pump stations; the bulkhead structures consisted of multiple face and drag sheet piles driven to a depth of approximately 80-feet. Due to the corrosive environment at the project locations, cathodic protection (CP) systems were required to mitigate corrosion of the bulkheads.
V&A designed three cathodic protection (CP) systems for each pump station bulkhead; a galvanic anode CP system for the exterior water side of the bulkhead, a galvanic anode CP system for the exterior soil side of the bulkhead, and an impressed current CP system for the interior soil side of the bulkhead. CP system design calculations, details, and specifications were submitted for each CP system. Once the installation of the systems was complete, V&A performed a site visit to each project location to activate, test, and adjust the CP systems to ensure corrosion of the bulkheads was mitigated per NACE International SP-0169 criteria for adequate corrosion control. A report was submitted to present the data collected during the field testing and to provide recommendations for future operations and maintenance of the CP systems.
