Granite Construction has locked down a $173 million contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to widen a weir in order to reduce flood risk on the Sacramento River in California north of the state’s capital city.
In addition to widening the weir, Granite will build a 25-span bridge for vehicles to pass over the new weir structure, as well as a fish passage to allow federal and state-listed species to avoid being stranded after floods, according to a company release.
Project funding will come from the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. The award was issued by the USACE’s Sacramento District.
According to USACE, the weir is more than 106 years old and its 48 gates are still manually operated. The project will help widen the existing 1,950-foot weir an additional 1,500 feet to the north, and make it a passive system that will allow flood waters to flow over the river channel and into the bypass.
Construction will entail extensive excavation and building new levee embankments, including a weir crest structure with an adjoining stilling basin. Rip-rap will be placed along levee embankments.
Granite plans to use 28,000 tons of aggregate from its nearby Capay Plant, including road base and structural backfill material. The firm will tap its Bradshaw Asphalt Plant for an additional 6,000 tons of hot mix asphalt to build roadways and access routes on the project.
Granite recently posted weak quarterly results after a string of extreme winter storms off the Pacific Ocean stymied many of its projects throughout the West. But it also benefited from more than $100 million in emergency projects to repair damage from those storms.
Granite plans to begin the Sacramento weir in July 2023 and aims to complete the job by December 2026, the company said.
