The OHL Group, through its subsidiary OHL USA, Inc., has been awarded a contract in California for approximately 200 million euros to rehabilitate the Owens Lake, which the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is executing in Keeler. This is the Group’s largest contract in California, where it has been working since 2013.

The contract covers the penultimate phase of the project launched to mitigate dust emissions from Owens Lake (Owens Lake Dust Mitigation Project – Phase 9/10), covering an area of 938 hectares on the lake’s shore, and 160 kilometers from the city of Los Angeles.

The activities executed by OHL USA, Inc. to clean and rehabilitate the lake focus on a surface area measuring nearly seven million square meters. Work will involve the construction of two types of basins, treatment of local plants and ground-level excavation of the foundations of the lake. The OHL Group subsidiary will also level the land, construct berms with the excavated material (protected with geotextiles and hydroseeding) and will lay down an irrigation network. Desiccation services will be used to transfer water from the existing ponds to the new work areas. The project will move more than 1.5 million cubic meters of earth and more than a million ton of gravel and include extensive mechanical and electrical work.

This is the largest project awarded to the OHL Group in the state of California since 2013, when it entered the market through the Wilmington Avenue Interchange project in the city of Carson. Other OHL environmental projects in California include the rehabilitation of the Machado Lake ecosystem in the Ken Malloy Harbor regional park, and the demolition, adjustment and installation of several structures, such as the control tower, dumpsite and drainage system, paving and electrification work in the Palos Verdes Reservoir natural reserve. Additional OHL projects in the state include the reconstruction of the raised station and bus stop in Patsaouras Square in Los Angeles city center, reconstruction of links between the SR-91 and SR-55 state highways in Orange County, and construction of two bridges over the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway tracks.