Eruption of Tainted Water Could Innundate Leadville, Colorado

Despite some sand boils found along the Mississippi River, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Army’s chief of staff, said “the levee system has done its job, up and down this river.” Mike Stack, the chief of […]

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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Residents of Iowa County were forced to evacuate as the swollen Missouri River caused a breach in one of its levees. What I found interesting was a description of a sand boil geyser: A Black […]