FAIRFIELD COUNTY, SC (WIS) -

Fairfield County taxpayers are demanding answers after finding out the county spent more than $300,000 on a football field. Over the weekend, a $40,000 retaining wall at the field crumbled to the ground.

The county finished construction four months ago, but the field still isn't finished.

The people we spoke with say they don't want another dime spent on this project and want those responsible for spending the money on the field to explain why Fairfield County needed it.

"I bet I told 50 people that wall was coming down," said former Fairfield County Councilman William Turner.

"What just ticks me off, I'm a taxpayer in this county and I just see y'all wave your arms and just -- I'm taking a $4,000 check down there today to pay taxes and see it wasted like this? That's what just disturbs me," said Fairfield County citizen Clyde Wade.

Fairfield County Administrator Milton Pope got a dressing down when he showed up to inspect the wall collapse at the county park Monday morning.

A huge section of a cinder block retaining wall fell over and took with it a fence taxpayers spent more than $40,000 to put up.

Pope gave his workers his initial assessment as soon as he walked up:

"Unless they didn't follow the plans right, it's built right," said Pope. "It just didn't give it, the wall, the time to pack before it got all that water in it.

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Collapsed retaining wall leads to questions about $320,000 football field

After more than two years of news stories and paying for two cleanups, Caltrans has finally removed the black tar ooze from a pre-modern era concrete retaining wall along Highway 128 just 40 feet from the Navarro River.

This newspaper literally exposed the mess attached to the front of the old concrete structure in our first story printed in summer 2012.

State regulators, responding to California Public Records Act requests for comment from this newspaper, had to use GPS devices to find the wall among dense brush back then. The low, west end of it is just 10 feet from the roadway, about 100 yards east of the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 128, on the east (mountain) side of the road.

A huge tank dispensed tar for blacktopping from atop the wall from the 1950s to 1970s. This kind of practice was common at the time but became strictly illegal due to emerging environmental regulations and concerns.

This newspaper's investigation printed in a half dozen stories over the past two years, exposed (after initial denial) that Caltrans had originally proposed to remove the entire wall structure as part of a $1.5 million guardrail replacing and enhancing project for a still planned nearby upgrade on Highway 128 but pulled the cleanup out of the project, baffling regulators at the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. The two projects are now separate.

Phil Frisbie Jr.

"Just to be clear, this cleanup work was never part of, or within the project area, of the guardrail project. The guardrail project is scheduled to go out to bid this spring and to construction this summer," said Frisbie.

Second cleanup seems to be working

A three-day cleanup in November, a year after the first, botched cleanup, filled three 20-cubic-yard disposal bins (about 26 tons of waste). Cleaned up by workers wearing protective and hazmat suits, it was transported under a non-hazardous waste manifest to the Potrero Hill Class II Landfill facility located in Suisun.

"The asphalt emulsion oil (tar) ranging in thickness from 1 to 4 feet was removed from behind the retaining wall using a 60-pound electric jack hammer and hand tools. The asphalt emulsion oil was removed to exposed native soil. The removed asphalt emulsion oil and associated soil and debris was then placed in the Bobcat bucket and transferred to the disposal bins," Geocon Consultants, the company that did both cleanups, wrote to Caltrans.

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Caltrans' tar tale

Print Create a hardcopy of this page Font Size: Default font size Larger font size Company in West Virginia spill cited in issues at 2nd site

In this Monday, Jan. 13, 2014, file photo, workers, left, inspect an area outside a retaining wall around storage tanks where a chemical leaked into the Elk River at Freedom Industries storage facility in Charleston, W.Va. Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Aluise says inspectors found five violations Monday at a Nitro, W.Va., site where Freedom Industries moved its coal-cleaning chemicals after last Thursdays spill. Inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility where the leak originated, the Nitro site lacked appropriate secondary containment. In Charleston, a porous containment wall allowed the chemical to ooze into the Elk River. Steve Helber/The Associated Press

In this Monday, Jan. 13, 2014, file photo, workers inspect an area outside a retaining wall around storage tanks where a chemical leaked into the Elk River at Freedom Industries storage facility in Charleston, W.Va. Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Aluise says inspectors found five violations Monday at a Nitro, W.Va., site where Freedom Industries moved its coal-cleaning chemicals after last Thursdays spill. Inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility where the leak originated, the Nitro site lacked appropriate secondary containment. In Charleston, a porous containment wall allowed the chemical to ooze into the Elk River. Steve Helber/The Associated Press

Posted: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 11:28 am | Updated: 12:12 pm, Wed Jan 15, 2014.

Company in West Virginia spill cited in issues at 2nd site Associated Press |

CHARLESTON, W.Va. State inspectors have cited the company whose spill contaminated the water supply for 300,000 West Virginians for five violations at a second facility where it is storing chemicals, and they say Freedom Industries might have to relocate its materials again because of a lack of a secondary containment plan.

State inspectors found the violations Monday at a Nitro site where Freedom Industries moved its coal-cleaning chemicals after Thursdays spill, according to a state Department of Environmental Protection report. Inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility where the leak originated, the Nitro site lacked appropriate last-resort containment to stop chemical leaks.

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Company in West Virginia spill cited in issues at 2nd site

ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND,OH, 419-557-8386, BARN STONE RETAINING WALL wall project 2013
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ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND,OH, 419-557-8386, BARN STONE RETAINING WALL wall project 2013 - Video

ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND, OH, 419-557-8386, RETAINING WALL BARN STONE 2013
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ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND, OH, 419-557-8386, RETAINING WALL BARN STONE 2013 - Video

Updated: 01/15/2014 7:20 AM Created: 01/14/2014 4:54 PM KSTP.com By: Ellen Galles

A crack in a South Minneapolis retaining wall is becoming a pit... a money pit. Homeowner Elizabeth Howell was originally cited for it back in 2008. The cost to fix it would be anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000.

Howell says the retaining wall is the city's property and after five years, dozens of letters to city officials and multiple court cases a Hennepin County judge finally agreed with her in late December.

Now Howell is waiting for the snow to melt and for a public works crew to come and fix it.

"The fact that the city dug its heels in and kept pushing me to fix it when it wasn't my responsibility, I find that outlandish," said Howell.

Minneapolis City attorney Susan Segal says they have to take a hard, careful look at cases like this. She says the dispute lasted so long because they were defending the city's interests and taxpayer dollars.

"We have to look closely and make sure we are doing our due diligence," Segal said.

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Crack in South Minneapolis Retaining Wall Becomes 'Money Pit'

Tears of sorrow change to tears of joy for displaced Covington residents
construction cost has been approved to provide permanent fix to a collapsed retaining wall.

By: WLWT

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Tears of sorrow change to tears of joy for displaced Covington residents - Video

NEW LAYOUT UPDATE - RETAINING WALL
Just a quick layout update with some running clips,hope you like.

By: TheZimma

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NEW LAYOUT UPDATE - RETAINING WALL - Video

Downtown businesses and restaurants began to reopen after water was declared safe to drink in portions of West Virginia's capital, but life has yet to return to normal for most of the 300,000 people who haven't been able to use running water in the five days since a chemical spill.

It could still be days before everyone in the Charleston metropolitan area is cleared to use water, though officials say the water in certain designated areas was safe to drink and wash with as long as people flushed out their systems. They cautioned that the water may still have a slight licorice-type odor, raising the anxieties of some who believed it was still contaminated.

"I wouldn't drink it for a while. I'm skeptical about it," said Wanda Blake, a cashier in the electronics section of a Charleston Kmart who fears she was exposed to the tainted water before she got word of the spill. "I know I've ingested it."

By Tuesday morning, officials had given the green light to about 35 percent of West Virginia American Water's customers. Thursday's spill affected 100,000 customers in a nine-county area, or about 300,000 people in all.

The water crisis shuttered schools, restaurants and day-care centers, and truckloads of water had to be brought in from out of state. People were told to use the water only to flush their toilets. Hospitals were flushing out systems as were schools, which hoped to open again Wednesday.

In downtown Charleston, the first section of the city where water was declared safe, few signs of the crisis were visible late Monday and hotel guests were informed they could use everything but the ice machines.

But many businesses remained shuttered in outlying residential neighborhoods. Charleston attorney Anthony Majestro represents several businesses that lost money while shut down and said he has lost count of the numerous lawsuits filed over the spill.

The Charleston Fire Department was continuing to give away cases of bottled water for free, and late Monday afternoon, a steady stream of vehicles crept through a station about a mile north of downtown.

Fire Capt. Eddie Moore estimated that firefighters, police officers and other volunteers at the station had given away 2,500 cases of water Monday _ more than 80,000 16-ounce bottles, or two tractor-trailers full. Firefighters loaded several cases into every vehicle that drove through.

Inside the station, the firefighters were surviving on frozen dinners, and Moore said the licorice smell from the taps was especially strong Monday morning.

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More in W.Va. cleared to use water after spill

Roanoke Co., VA - Engineers say they know what caused a retaining wall to fail over the weekend near 220, leaving quite a mess on a high profile development being built near Tanglewood Mall.

It happened Saturday soon after heavy rains hit the area.

Luckily no one was hurt, but there are a lot of people wondering what exactly happened.

The engineer who designed the wall at the South Peak development says the partial collapse was apparently an issue that had been developing unbeknownst to anyone, until about 800-square feet of that wall gave way.

The primary factor, according to an engineer, was an improperly installed drainage pipe that has been seeping water for some time.

The problem caused the wall to separate from the geo-grid that holds the wall in place.

That separation was exasperated significantly during Saturday's downpour.

"There was a separation between the curb and gutter and the asphalt pavement that occurred, I believe, after the initial movement of the wall and opened a gap allowing more water to get in there," explained GeoTech Engineer Mike Circeo.

"Things like this happen. Especially when you are dealing with a project of this size and complexity of this one. We're dealing with it the right. While we fix it we will continue to develop the other aspects," said South Peak Developer Hunter Smith.

The rest of the wall has been inspected, ABC 13 has learned, and there are no other issues from what engineers can tell.

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Engineer: Improperly Installed Pipe Caused Wall Collapse in Roanoke Co.