Eruption of Tainted Water Could Innundate Leadville, Colorado

A massive, possibly 50 million cubic meter landslide occurred on Thursday in Kahramanmaraş Province of Turkey. Not too many details yet, but early reports had 9 miners missing and 1 killed. The landslide occurred in […]

That is the title of a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on post-Katrina levee issues in New Orleans (by way of ASCE Smart Brief). I think the article is somewhat sensationalized, but they do cite some interesting parallels between the levee reconstruction efforts made after Katrina and the levee construction/reconstruction that occurred after Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

The article also discusses a recent US Army audit with some disturbing although not unexpected findings:

An initial September 2010 target to complete the $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work has slipped to mid-2011. Then last September, an Army audit found 84 percent of work behind schedule because of engineering complexities, environmental provisos and real estate transactions. The report added that costs would likely soar.

A more recent analysis shows the start of 84 of 156 projects was delayed – 15 of them by six months or more. Meanwhile, a critical analysis of what it would take to build even stronger protection – 500-year-type levees – was supposed to be done last December but remains unfinished.

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The Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance or GEER group funded by the NSF puts experts on the ground in the aftermath of natural disasters to collect geotechnical data that can used in case studies and ultimately […]