NOLA Levee Costs Triple

8 Comments

1. 

   Steven D on March 31, 2006 at 2:17 pm

   All we have to do is find a way for NOLA to be more profitable for Halliburton than Iraq is.

   Oh wait, that’s impossible, isn’t it?

   Sorry . . .

   • 

     albert on March 31, 2006 at 2:35 pm

     I’m sure they’ve assigned several consultants to write up a report on just how they could milk the Gulf Coast region for as much as Iraq and that they’re plugging numbers away as I type.

2. 

   Arcturus on March 31, 2006 at 3:38 pm

   Schwarzennegger recently brought Chertoff out to Sacramento, in an unsuccessful attempt to get Federal funds through an emergency decree to shore up the region’s weakened levee system. We are the second most at risk to flooding commmunity in the country after New Orleans.

   Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked the Bush administration to declare a federal emergency on the levee system of the Central Valley to help speed repairs, and invited Chertoff to visit the region to see the weak levee system firsthand.

   The two took a 40 minute aerial tour over two vulnerable areas, Sacramento’s Natomas and Pocket communities.

   Afterward, during a news briefing, Chertoff was asked what caught his attention from the air.

   “There’s a lot of water,” he said.   link

   Yeah, well he ought to see it when the channels are a foot or two below the levee tops, like they were in 1986 when we were driving home from a car-camping trip to Death Valley at the height of storms that caused several levee failures in the area. Both north-south freeways had flooded out, so all traffic, including the semi’s had been diverted to the delta’s narrow two-lane levee roads — there’s nothing like having a semi throw up a blinding sheet of water as you go into a turn, knowing there’s water waiting two feet to the right of your lane.

   Further studies continue to show that the levees don’t provide as much protection as initially advertised and that the area “could be far more vulnerable to flooding than previously believed, according to engineers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

   “We just don’t know what level of protection West Sacramento has,” said Jason Fanselau, spokesman for the corps, noting the city has based its flood safety claims on outdated studies.

   In the past 10 years, Fanselau said, so much new information has emerged about weather patterns and levee seepage problems that it is unwise for communities to rely on older studies to describe their present flooding risks.   {snip}

   In 2002, however, a major study by the corps and the state Department of Water Resources showed West Sacramento among the many communities in the region that would be under water in a 200-year storm.

   “It’s somewhere between a 100-year event and a 200-year event where they would begin to be inundated,” said Scott Stonestreet, a hydraulic engineer with the corps who worked on the study.

   Recent revelations about “underseepage” – the movement of water and sediment deep beneath levees – suggest the area may not even meet the federal government’s minimal 100-year threshold for protection.

   “It could even be lower if underseepage is investigated and included in the analysis,” Stonestreet said.

   Sacramento’s Natomas community is facing the same problem. Geotechnical studies detailed last week indicate that because of underseepage, the Natomas basin does not have the 100-year protection engineers once thought.

   Three months ago, the New Year’s storms, considered tame by flood standards, showed the vulnerability of the city’s levees.   {snip}

   During the heavy rains, the Sacramento River rose and winds pushed big waves that caused extensive erosion in four sections of the levee. Just south of Davis Road, small “boils” bubbled up on the land side of the levee. On the Yolo Bypass, a chunk of clay soil that hadn’t been replaced began to “slump,” or slide down the levee.   link

   So, we can spend billions on a pre-emptive war in Iraq (supposedly for security) but can’t find the dollars to fully repair New Orleans’ devasted levees, nor can we pre-emptively spend to protect the residents of Sacramento.

   Chertoff said federal emergency declarations usually come only after an actual event has happened, or is imminent within a day or so. He said legal issues may stand in the way of getting such a declaration for California when a flood has not occurred, but added that he would look for other ways to bring more federal assistance to the area.   {snip}

   Schwarzenegger . . . on Feb. 24 declared the levee system a state emergency . . . The state is proceeding with its plans to spend about $100 million in emergency funding to repair 24 critical erosion sites this year. A federal declaration would enable the state to set aside federal environmental requirements that could lengthen the repair process.

   The governor said that although efforts had failed in the state Legislature to get a bond measure for levees and other state building needs on the June ballot, he would continue trying for the November ballot.

   Not to worry though, they’ll do what they can now and Chertie & FEMA will take care of us if anything should happen.

   Chertoff also said he is working to ensure state, federal and local emergency planning agencies are adequately prepared to handle a crisis. “Under the best of circumstances we are not going to fix the levees overnight,” he said. “We have to look at emergency planning.”

3. 

   sbj on March 31, 2006 at 6:15 pm

   I believe they’re building the levees with the wrong kind of clay also, a clay that disintegrates easily when exposed to moving water. (I saw a very informative technical report on this somewhere recently but I can’t remember where.)

   • 

     albert on March 31, 2006 at 7:52 pm

     a clay that disintegrates easily when exposed to moving water?!?!?!?!?!

     • 

       sbj on March 31, 2006 at 10:20 pm

       This is not exactly the article I was looking for but it does nevertheless raise similar warnings to the story I referenced above.

       In the story I saw on TV, a geologist (or something) held a handful of the type of clay being used to repair the levess under a running tap and the water pressure caused the lump he held to disintegrate. He then held a lump of another, suitable clay, under the tap and it held it’s form, didn’t absorb water, and didn’t crumble apart. The thrust of the story was that the Army corp of Engineers was working to spec with the first, (disintegratable), type of clay, not the other more water impervious one, and that they refuse to acknowledge the inappropriatness of the one they were using.

       • 

         albert on March 31, 2006 at 11:55 pm

         The Corps is going to get on that “geologist” to admit he’s a terrorist.  Or at least helping the terrorists by showing how they can use WATER to take apart the levees.  And when the Almighty uses Mother Nature to bring water to where the levees are, will W turn on Him and put him in the Axis of Evil?

4. 

   asdf on April 1, 2006 at 6:17 pm

   At some point, New Orleans politicians, including Kathleen Babineaux, are going to have to face up to the fact that their city is located in a poorly selected area. For whatever reason–be it history, port development, changes in the river, you name it–the situation now is that it does not make sense to rebuild New Orleans, or at least not to resemble what it was before.

   If the ports are going to be located there, the port employees and their families need homes. But the rest of the city should be moved away from the coast.

   The best way to do this would be a cooperative undertaking starting from a reality-based view of the broad problem. More likely there will be more bickering, more floods, more money wasted, and more lives lost.