Investigate the Levees

Kudos to John Barry for pushing what, until recently, seemed like a dead letter -- a federal "8/29" commission to investigate what went wrong with the New Orleans levee system during Hurricane Katrina:

The resolution approved by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East was proposed by authority Secretary John Barry, also the author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.

An 8/29 commission was originally proposed in 2006 by Levees.org, a local group critical of the Army Corps of Engineers and its construction of the levees. The group gained support from Sen. Mary Landrieu for the proposal, but Landrieu has said her attempts have been blocked by Republicans.

Barry's resolution calls for the commission to look beyond the specific reasons levees and floodwalls failed during the 2005 hurricane and include a review of how hurricane and flood protection are designed all along the Mississippi River.

"I'm really asking that they take a comprehensive look at the entire Mississippi River system, the entire Mississippi valley, from New York state to Idaho," Barry said. "They should look, for instance, at the dams on the upper Missouri River in detail, because they have a real impact on the amount of sediment that's carried in the river, which has a real impact on the erosion of wetlands in Louisiana."

This is exactly right: at issue is not merely how some bad designs crept into floodwalls (a question that, criminally, remains unanswered), but why the whole system failed, and what lessons we might glean from that to prevent it from happening again, in New Orleans and elsewhere. As Barry so brilliantly documented in Rising Tide, in the 1920s the Corps of Engineers and other institutions (Congress, state and local agencies) were incapable of responding either to actual changes in the landscape or to advances in the scientific understanding of river flooding -- resulting in the terrible 1927 Mississippi River flood. The same was true of hurricane flooding in the 40 years before Katrina. Incredibly, it's true today as well - for both kinds of floods, as we can see by what's happening in the Midwest now. Only by looking at the whole system from stem to stern can we get our arms around these problems. Will it happen? With the Democrats in control of Congress and perhaps the presidency, maybe.

There's a good piece in the Washington Post today by the redoubtable Joel Achenbach addressing this issue. Agriculture has altered the physical landscape of Iowa in ways that scientists and engineers don't fully understand or appreciate, and that is compounding the current flooding disaster.

www.johnmcquaid.com/blog

Comments

[sher2x4]

Good Luck America, your going to need it.

[haleywins]

Levees.org 's orginal legislation for the 8/29 Investigation.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:s2826is.txt.pdf

[rightsright]

After days of watching this hurricane growing in the gulf, and watching on television the effects a hurricane this strong would have on New Orleans should the levees give way.....I sat absolutely shocked as thousands of people were herded into harms way with no food, no water, and no protection.
So while all you folks who are still suffering from the Hate Bush Derangement are looking for anything to hang on President Bush....think about this.
In the 1970's, the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Pontchartrain and Vincinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf from flooding New Orleans. These flood gates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. So what happened? According to a report in the Times-Picayune, the plans were aborted because "environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system". So while you are calling for investigations into the Katrina disaster, lets add the "Save Our Wetlands" group for stopping this project with their lawsuits. And apparently no one had the political will to fight this group even though scientists had long warned about New Orleans vulnerability to the potential for massive loss of life caused by the environmentalist's lawsuit. And now we know the rest of the story.
Oh I forgot, your hatred for this President is so intense, truth is not an option.

[Bienville]

This statement is absolutely incorrect: "These flood gates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina."

The floodgates proposed in the "barrier plan" would have kept water from entering the Lake. In Hurricane Katrina, three protected areas of New Orleans were flooded by the storm surge. Two of those were flooded by water from the Gulf: New Orleans East and St. Bernard (which includes the Lower Ninth Ward). Barriers at the Rigloets, Chef Pass, and Seabrook would have made absolutely no difference.

In calling the plan the "Lake Ponchartrain and Vicinity ..." (LPV), the Corps reveals its blindside. Surge from the Gulf is the danger. The Lake didn't enter the City during Betsy, Camille, or any of the other hurricanes since 1947. The Lake wouldn't have been a problem in Katrina either, were it not for the miserable floodwall designs built by the Corps.

The Corps didn't shelve the barrier plan because the environmentalists sued. They abandoned it because they chose to not perform the environmental studies required by the National Environmental Protection Act of 1967 (NEPA). Conformance with this law is required of all projects funded by Federal money.

Hatred for this president has absolutely no bearing on these truths.

[HoppinHill]

Rightsright, why not include a link to your source?

You are passing along dis-information. Federal Judge Stanwood Duval in a January 30, 2008 ruling addressed this exact issue. Here is what happened. The corps and the locals, after much discussion agreed to not to build the floodgates which included NO pumps because the city would be vulnerable to rising rainwater. The corps and locals agreed instead to strengthen the walls along the canal. In hindsight, a bad idea, but it was agreed upon by all. You can read about it here:
http://levees.org/Dismissal.pdf

[rightsright]

Exactly, HoppinHill...."instead" is the right word....because of the environmental lawsuits...their original plans were abandoned and their alternative plan to reinforce existing levees was not adequate for a storm like Katrina. And according to the report, the plans pushed by the environmentalists did not fortify the specific areas the government sought to protect.
There is just so much you can say in 250 words
The link...."New Orleans: A Green Genocide" by Michael Tremogile...Frontpagemagazine.com 9/08/2005
which by the way includes

[Overd0g]

No, the issue is why people are encouraged to live under sea level in hurricane alley, and why taxpayers are required to fund that idiocy. Next we'll have to rescue morons that decide to live in the calderas of active volcanos.

[dadw5boys]

WHAT DID PEOPLE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN WITH REGEAN / DADDY BUSH AND G.W. BUSH'S BUDGETS CUTTING AWAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE INFUSTRUCTURE?????????

[kidcurioso]

Look at news from the midwest today: 20 levees have failed--so far. There are 48 others reportedly in danger and another 120 identified as vulnerable--identified by the Corps of Engineers, that is...

New Orleans should be a wake-up call--levee failure threatens the entire nation, directly by flooding or indirectly by lost commerce, infrastructure or repair costs.

Any improvement depends on accurate information--identifying what failed and why it failed are vital to minimizing future problems.

There is nothing wrong with investigating levee failures. Unless you have something to hide.

[kageorgia]

If you build on flood plains, you're gonna get flooded. If you cause global warming, you're going to get extreme weather. How hard can it be to figure out?

[HoppinHill]

Kageorgia, no joke: 43% of the American population live in areas protected by levees according to the Association of State Floodplain Managers in a breifing to Senator Landrieu two days ago. Wish I had a link, but the meeting was in Rm 2325 Rayburn Hall in Washington DC.

Further, there are 3,786 flood gauges in America spread fairly evenly throughout the country. http://www.weather.gov/ahps/index.php

[afgail]

Here's a clue for you. If most of the worlds glaciers are melting where do you think all that water that had been locked up on mountain tops went? Down hill and into the lowlands and into the clouds to become rain. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why the midwest is flooding.

[gwendeleon]

I lost everything in Katrina here in New Orleans. Please, always remember, there is a big difference between a levee being overtopped and it failing. Water levels can get high enough to go over the levee, with some resulting flooding. However, levees are NOT SUPPOSED TO FAIL. They are supposed to be constructed so that they stay up, even though water may go OVER THEM. My home in New Orleans was four feet off the ground. If the floodwall in my neighborhood had only been overtopped, my home would not have had any water in it, only under it. But when the floodwall crumbled, everyone was doomed. It was not supposed to fall apart!

[Bienville]

You're right!

The levees are supposed to hold even as they are overtopped. Some did. Had New Orleans experienced only overtopped levees, the resulting street flooding would have been pumped out in a matter of hours. As it happened very poor designs failed catastrophically at lower than their design levels.

I'm very sorry to hear about your home.

[incontempt]

they are overwhelmed by over developed land and under built because republicans don't like paying tax's...whats to investigate? the voters get what they ask for!

[HoppinHill]

The investigation will costs just $5 million - that's a tenth of one percent of the federal money allocated to rebuild and levee system. What's not to like about this study? Why not do the study, which as Barry points out, since it begins three years out, will have the benefit of other studies and new knowledge gained to do the investigation right.

[LastLiberalRepublican]

Something of a short term and myopic view, considering the time frame over which the levees were built...........,but then I guess it makes you feel good.

[Heartlight3]

I wonder what it is going to take for people to figure out that if you fill in wetlands to put subdivisions in, there will be floods. Wetlands are the sponges that absorb excess water when it rains. If you fill them in, there is no place for that water to go but into the rivers and they fill up over capacity and then they flood. It's pretty simple.

[haleywins]

Iowa contributed to their flooding, wouldn't you agree? Pretty simple.

[HoppinHill]

Civil engineers should have predicted this flooding. This is a failure of the civil engineering profession to plan, to design, and to monitor their flood protection structures. And it just so happens that the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for most of the critical and important levees in America is the largest civil engineering organization in the WORLD.

[YankeeCanuck]

Agriculture HAS changed the face of the midwest landscape. So has suburban sprawl with its abundance of 6-lane roads and plenty more impermeable surface for its shopping malls. Around the midwest, levees in cities have of necessity been reinforced and built higher than before.
Thing is, that also increases the force of the water passing through. Something has got to give, and that's what we're seeing now.

[HoppinHill]

Levees.Org, the organization that originally proposed and wrote the 8/29 Investigation legislation had always said that what happened to New Orleans could have happened anywhere and the issue is not being addressed.

You can read the language of the legislation Senate Bill 2826 here:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:s2826is.txt.pdf

[hopeless277]

Why? No one is ever at fault. All you'll get is a one sentence report: Mistakes were made.