AP: New Orleans levee leaking again; vulnerable to storm
Pastor Dale Morgan
AP: New Orleans levee leaking again; vulnerable to storm*
With the year's official hurricane season set to start June 1, The
Associated Press reports that a New Orleans levee that broke during
Katrina and was repaired is leaking again — because the city is built on
soft ground.
Seepage has occurred at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview district,
and engineers say the problem afflicts other levess, which could fail
during a storm.
The Army Corps of Engineers is downplaying the seepage but analyzing the
wet spots.
AP writes:
The Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far 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 that billions more will be needed and that some of
the work already completed may need to be redone.
"It is all based on a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking, and it
means that when they wake up to this one — really — our cost is going to
increase significantly," said Bob Bea, a civil engineer at the
University of California at Berkeley.
The Army Corps of Engineers disputed the experts' dire assessment. The
agency said it is taking the risk of seepage into account and rebuilding
the levees with an adequate margin of safety.
"It's always a potential, so it is a design component for every
feature," said Walter Baumy, the chief corps engineer in New Orleans.
Bea predicts a 40% chance that the 17th Street Canal would collapse if
water rises 6 feet above sea level; it rose 7 feet when Hurricane
Katrina hit in August 2005.
The chief of the Army Corps' technical-support branch in New Orleans
says the problem isn't serious.
"I personally do not at all believe that this little wet spot is
anything that is going to cause a breach or a failure of any kind," said
Donald Jolissaint, noting that a new floodgate could be used to stop the
flow of water into the canal and reduce pressure on the levee.