As has been made clear by Ox and myself, the work is being done by a barely competent, inefficient crew...and in the same fashion...... using backward methods that are detrimental to the existing landscape and to the safety of the crew.
It's the fault of the ACOI for not screening the contractor to see if it is qualified to do the job, and for not offering the opportunity to bid to local companies.
There really have been more than enough safety and work practices snafus to have shut the company down. Maybe L&I didn't come back to watch and maybe stop work again because they were pressured from some Fed guy to let it go. I dunno.
I stopped by Wed briefly, with my crew in tow. Ironically, we had just done a quickie job for the City of Renton, removing two small cottonwood before the beaver that was after them got in a big face and started the backcut. Terry told us of the recent ACOI work along the Duwamish River, cutting everything down. No doubt the trees being cut were doing their job of putting down stabilizing roots...and uptaking water......who knows, maybe there was two trees that were capable of falling and jepoardizing the levee along the whole stretch that they clear cut------or not.
They had brought in Ness Crane...and damned if the crane op wasn't visibly frustrated with the crew and climbers...of which there were two in the tree. They were slightly better climbers. A nice guy, and tree service owner, had come in from Oklahoma with them to help out the contractor. We chatted with him for a while....and found out that the contractor was offered the tree work as an aside. Prolly because the Florida company listed as the bid winner backed out.
Of course, they had an extra four of so ground workers standing around doing nothing, when they could have been chipping....or maybe have located a trash truck hauling service on their own, instead of asking us who to call. I begrudged and gave them Ernie's number. Later I chatted with Ernie. The guy had told him the trees were 7 foot on the butt (nothing larger than 5, maybe 6 feet actually) and wanted to sell the logs-----maybe didn't even know they were poplar and that there is zero market for it. Ernie told him $600 a load. There might be close to 20 loads....that'll eat into that $70,000 bid, eh?!
I imagine that one local company did bid on the job, as they're on the Fed website as an interested company. I bet their bid was over $100,000...way over.
