New Orleans levees need time, effort, resources
Water pours through broken levees in New Orleans on August 30, 2005. Can the Big Easy get back to normal? Engineer Mead Allison says it can happen, with help. Read the Earth & Sky interview with Allison. (USACE photo)
DB: This is Earth & Sky. When Katrina battered the Gulf Coast in August of 2005, the hurricane and subsequent flooding left more than 1,000 people dead. New Orleans is still three-quarters empty.
JB: Robert Bea is a civil engineer at University of California, Berkeley. He’s part of an independent team funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate why New Orleans’ levees failed. Dr. Bea talked to Earth & Sky about what he called “remarkable progress” rebuilding the levees.
Robert Bea: They’ve been able to stabilize most of the breach sites, so that water intrusion is now very minimal.
DB: Hurricane season begins again in June. Earth & Sky asked Dr. Bea if New Orleans’ levees will be ready.
Robert Bea: And, to think that we can get it done by the first of June in 2006, I think is potentially seriously misleading people into this false sense of confidence regarding the level of protection that they’ve actually got. My personal opinion is that the level of protection is not adequate to confront the kinds of severe storms that can turn this area back into a soup bowl filled with water and people’s lives.
JB: Dr. Bea said that with enough time, effort, and resources, reasonable, long-term protection for New Orleans, in his words, “can be done.” We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Can the Big Easy get back to normal? Engineer Mead Allison says it can happen, with help. Read the Earth & Sky interview with Allison.
Other Katrina related stories:
Radio: Many former New Orleanians will never return
Radio: For children of Katrina, normalcy is key
Radio: What will New Orleans look like in the future?
Radio: Poor are most vulnerable to natural disasters
Radio: Wetlands vital to post-Katrina restoration
Thanks to:
Robert Bea (PhD, PE)
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of California
Berkeley, CA
Additional Teacher Resources
National Geographic: A City’s Faulty Armor: Experts Question Repairs to New Orleans Levees
As residents of New Orleans slowly rebuild their homes and lives after Hurricane Katrina, they are relying on the citys cordon of levees and floodwalls to protect them from the next big storm. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declared almost a year ago that it had restored the barriers to pre-Katrina strength. But leading experts from the U.S. and the Netherlands say the system is riddled with flaws. They say that even a weaker storm than Katrina could breach the levees if it hit this season.
National Science Foundation: Researches Release Draft Final Report on New Orleans Levees
Following an eight-month study of the New Orleans levee system and its performance during Hurricane Katrina, a 30-person team of researchers led by Raymond Seed and Robert Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, released a near-complete draft of their findings today in a “town hall” meeting in that Gulf Coast city.
