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County engineers and commissioners clash over 900 Road culvert repair after pipes floated during flowable-fill pour
Summary
A county culvert repair on 900 Road ran over budget and left one pipe bent and another floated; commissioners and Kaw Valley engineers disagreed about execution and oversight, and the board discussed remediation options and possible legal follow-up.
The commission heard a detailed account of problems that occurred during a 900 Road culvert repair when flowable fill during successive pours displaced and damaged one culvert and left another partially floated and bent. Chad from Kaw Valley described how the second pour caused differential movement, producing a bent west pipe and a floated east pipe. He said the work met permitting requirements but that on-site execution complications led to the current condition.
Multiple commissioners questioned how the county obtained a permit without a full engineered design for backfill and whether county crews or the contractor should bear remediation costs. Commissioners said they relied on the on-call engineer and project foremen for guidance; Kaw Valley representatives countered that the permit route and the low-cost execution approach had been chosen to reduce expense and that the resulting execution problems were not straightforward to assign.
Options discussed included carefully extracting damaged pipes (with a risk of further damage and additional cost, roughly $7,000–$10,000 per tube if replacements were needed), encasing the existing pipes in concrete (unknown but potentially tens of thousands of dollars in concrete and labor), or reopening bidding for a more robust engineered solution such as a precast box culvert. Kaw Valley agreed to provide detailed cost estimates for the remediation options and documentation of permits, communications and on-site decisions.
The exchange became contentious: commissioners stressed they had followed Kaw Valley’s recommendations and said the county should not bear all remedial costs if the execution plan did not work; Kaw Valley repeatedly said it would compile documentation and declined to assign legal blame during the meeting, noting that it would review records if the county pursued legal remedies.
What happens next: Kaw Valley will provide a written summary of site decisions, permit correspondence and estimates for the remediation options. The commission will consider those numbers and whether to pursue contractor remedies, a hired contractor removal/replacement, or concrete encasement at its next meeting.
