Questions are raised about levee repairs

Source: AP

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Even after more than 22 million dollars in repairs, a levee along the 17th Street Canal in New Orleans still leaks.

The repairs included driving interlocking sheets of steel 60 feet into the ground, more than three times the depth that they were before Hurricane Katrina. The metal sheets are supposed to keep canal water from seeping under the levee. However, the Army Corps of Engineers has found that the water has been making it through the joints in the sheets to form puddles and wet spots on the other side.

Outside engineering experts have told The Associated Press that seepage is an indication that other levees might also have leaks.

University of California civil engineer Bob Bea says the government is using "a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking" to plan and carry out the repairs on the levee system. He estimates that there is a 40 percent chance that the 17th Street Canal levee could fail should the water rise higher than 6 feet above sea level.

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Leaky New Orleans Levee Alarms Experts

... The seepage is raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses, and outside engineering experts said the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.

The Army Corps of Engineers so far has spent about $4 billion of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011.

Some outside experts said the leak could mean billions more will be needed and that some of the work already completed may need to be redone.

The corps disputed the experts' dire assessment ...

http://www.wdsu.com/news/16355655/detail.html

What the fuck is wrong. The Dutch can do it and keep the low country dry. The English can do it and keep the Thames out. We're the richest country in the world and we can't get it right on the second try? What are we using, popsicle sticks?

years that goes near there - and we'll be hearing about dynamited levees again.

they found one that was newly built part with wadded up newspaper instead of the rubberized material that was supposed to be in the seams. pathetic. we don't have any people who even know what they're doing. seems like the only capable civil engineers are over 60. surprising? of course not, we've not _done_ any real civil engineering for decades to give them any real experience. anyway, time to call in the experts and fire the proven fraudsters and failures known as the Army Corp of Engineers. How far they've fallen. and we can thanks the bullshit 'republican revolution' for that.

There is a private agency in NO that told the Corps of Engineers repeatedly the method they are using is not working, and there are newer methods that would be effective. They obviously are not listening.

The current method simply drives steel plate into the ground beneath the concrete levees-problem is the ground is unstable, the entire assembly sinks. Estimate is that most of the "repaired" levees will be ineffective if there is a heavy storm this summer.

mark