THE RACE TO REPAIR IRAQ ’ S MOSUL DAM

stability . It is precisely this ongoing work that was neglected when IS held the dam for several weeks in 2014 .

Trevi won the expedited contract late last year .

“ The award of the contract , due to the procedure of urgency related to the conditions of the dam , will not follow the normal tendering procedures and rules of the ministry ,” noted the Iraqi government in a statement in February announcing the contract .

It ’ s not the company ’ s first urgent repair job . The Trevi Group has almost 6 decades of experience in soil engineering and has done dam specialized maintenance work more than 170 times around the world .

The U . S . Army Corps of Engineers has also been intimately involved .

A semi-confidential report issued earlier this year that was partially leaked through the Iraqi Parliament , gave the findings of a very bleak Corps assessment of the dam ’ s condition . The findings of that report were largely responsible for sounding the alarm on urgent maintenance needs . U . S . interests in the area--military , business , and political--have also been given an evacuation and contingency plan by the U . S . Embassy in the event that the dam fails catastrophically .

Rebecca Keller , a science and technology analyst for the U . S . - based global intelligence company Stratfor , noted that some of the repair work will be a challenge .

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