The Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for maintenance of the levees protecting New Orleans. Residents of New Orleans had complained about the levees leaking and being in overall disrepair for years and years.
New Orleans survived Katrina relatively unscathed.
But the extra water from Katrina fell in the huge lake and the levees failed and flooded New Orleans with huge loss of lives and property.
Independent experts note that if the levees had been properly maintained, no flooding would have occurred.
However the Army Corps of Engineers isn’t really the guilty party here either: they’ve been requesting funds and equipment to replace the levees for the last seventy years; funds which have been consistently denied by both Congress and the Pentagon.
Similar negligence happened in Houston with Harvey, except there it was the private developers working outside the city limits who ignored the parts of the building code intended to control flooding. The City of Houston, and pretty much all of the incorporated municipalities, enforced the code, but Harris County didn’t, so the city came out of it with no more damage than expected from a storm of that type but the unincorporated parts of the county got totaled.
For reference, about half of New Orleans is under sea level. In a swampy, hurricane-prone area. Bordering a lake, the largest river in North America, and the ocean. So yeah, the levees are important. 😐
The river over countless millennia has delivered silt to the delta. This built up mass that causes the underlying rocks to sink, which sinkage was countered by the the continuing addition of new silt. With the Corps channelizing of the river to contain its seasonal overflows and flooding, the silt is now carried way further out from land by the faster moving water. The overweighted delta however, continues to sink.
Can somebody explain this a bit? Was the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for the flooding somehow? Did they make the dam or what?
The Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for maintenance of the levees protecting New Orleans. Residents of New Orleans had complained about the levees leaking and being in overall disrepair for years and years.
New Orleans survived Katrina relatively unscathed.
But the extra water from Katrina fell in the huge lake and the levees failed and flooded New Orleans with huge loss of lives and property.
Independent experts note that if the levees had been properly maintained, no flooding would have occurred.
However the Army Corps of Engineers isn’t really the guilty party here either: they’ve been requesting funds and equipment to replace the levees for the last seventy years; funds which have been consistently denied by both Congress and the Pentagon.
Not to mention state funding tended to wind up getting transferred into certain pockets that weren’t so much into levee construction…
Similar negligence happened in Houston with Harvey, except there it was the private developers working outside the city limits who ignored the parts of the building code intended to control flooding. The City of Houston, and pretty much all of the incorporated municipalities, enforced the code, but Harris County didn’t, so the city came out of it with no more damage than expected from a storm of that type but the unincorporated parts of the county got totaled.
Ike was just bad luck. That’s what happens when a category 5 hurricane hits the largest deep water port in the hurricane zone.
For reference, about half of New Orleans is under sea level. In a swampy, hurricane-prone area. Bordering a lake, the largest river in North America, and the ocean. So yeah, the levees are important. 😐
The river over countless millennia has delivered silt to the delta. This built up mass that causes the underlying rocks to sink, which sinkage was countered by the the continuing addition of new silt. With the Corps channelizing of the river to contain its seasonal overflows and flooding, the silt is now carried way further out from land by the faster moving water. The overweighted delta however, continues to sink.