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Tempe rulers lied to us about Tempe Town Toilet!
Of course the royal rulers and government tyrants that run the Tempe city council think they are above the law.
Tempe lacked OK in January to repair dam by Dianna M. Náñez - Aug. 1, 2010 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic Tempe's repeated assertion that a severe storm prevented the city from beginning repairs on the deteriorating Town Lake dam in January was only half the story, public documents show. The city did not get permission from the Arizona Department of Water Resources to proceed with the repairs until March 25, almost two months after the storm, according to reports provided to The Arizona Republic under a public-records request. Responding to information in the documents, Tempe officials acknowledged Friday that they could not have started working on the dam in January, regardless of the storm. But Assistant City Manager Jeff Kulaga and City Engineer Andy Goh said the city's contractor was prepared in January to begin work on a construction-staging area near the dam, had it not been for the rain. Before the records were released, it appeared the storm was the only reason for delaying the dam's replacement until July 21, the morning after the dam burst, emptying the lake and sending almost a billion gallons of water into the Salt River. Work had been scheduled to start hours after the dam broke. Since early this year, Tempe officials have blamed the January downpour, Arizona's worst winter storm in 17 years, for delaying replacement of the four rubber bladders that make up Town Lake's west-end dam. The dams were to be replaced because inspections dating to at least 2006 showed that sun damage was causing the rubber to deteriorate faster than expected. An Arizona Republic review of public records shows that Tempe did not submit its application to the Arizona Department of Water Resources to begin construction on the dam until Feb. 17, almost four weeks after the severe storm. The state agency is charged with Arizona's non-federal dam safety. The agency did not approve the application until March 25. Michael Johnson, an assistant director for the agency, said Thursday that Tempe could not have replaced the dams without the approved application. "The approval of the application is the approval of construction," he said. Kulaga and Goh said that on Dec. 17, Tempe did give its contractor permission to begin "prep work" on a staging area near the lake and to ready a cofferdam that would have allowed Town Lake to remain filled while the new bladders were installed. That work was to begin in January, Kulaga said, but "Mother Nature" got in the way. In response to January's storms, Tempe monitored the lake's water levels from Jan. 19-22, lowering the bladders to allow water to flow west into the dry Salt River bed and prevent flooding. The bladders were back up Jan. 23. But runoff from upstream caused water to continue flowing over the west dam through May 27, preventing construction workers from entering the area, Kulaga said. Kulaga said Tempe then had to wait for the riverbed to dry out before building an access road to the construction site, making it impossible to begin construction before July 21. Kulaga and Goh stressed Friday that even if Tempe had its permit to start work on the dam in January, Bridgestone Industrial Products Inc. - which manufactured the original bladders as well as the replacements - had advised the city to replace the four west-end rubber bladders one by one according to which bladder had been previously patched because of a leak. The bladder that burst had an air leak and bulge, but the damage was never considered serious enough to patch. It was scheduled to be replaced this summer. Kulaga said Tempe will begin construction on the dam this week, barring bad weather. "We expect to have the lake filled by Nov. 1," he said.
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