Army Corps says Condition of many levees a mystery
By JIM SALTER, Associated Press Writer Mon May 12, 5:05 AM ET
ST. LOUIS - Across America, earthen flood levees protect big cities and
small towns, wealthy suburbs and rich farmland. But the Army Corps of
Engineers, the federal agency that oversees levees, lacks an inventory of
thousands of them and has no idea of their condition, the corps' chief
levee
expert told The Associated Press.
The uncertainty, amid an unusually wet spring that has already caused
significant flooding across many states, is creating worry even within the
corps.
"We have to get our arms around this issue and understand how many levees
there are in the country, who's watching over them, what populations and
properties are behind them," Eric Halpin, the corps' special assistant for
dam and levee safety, said in an interview last month. "What is the risk
posed to the public?"
Critics are troubled that the government doesn't know the answer.
Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley levee expert, said many
levees are old, with rusting infrastructure and built to protect against
relatively common floods - not the big ones like the Great Flood of 1993,
when 1,100 levees were broken or had water spill over their tops.
"Once they do get an inventory," Bea said, "I think we're not going to
like
what we find."
Residents along the Mississippi River have been fighting floods with
levees
since the 19th century. After a devastating 1927 flood, Congress got
involved, approving construction of levees and reservoirs along the
Mississippi and Missouri river basins.
Today, about 2,000 levees are either operated by the corps or by local
entities in partner****p with the corps, generally protecting major
population areas such as St. Louis and New Orleans.
Thousands of others - no one is sure how many - are privately owned,
operated and maintained. The majority of those are "farm" levees keeping
water out of fields, but some protect populated areas, industries and
businesses.
For example, flooding in March breached private levees near the
southeastern
Missouri towns of Dutchtown and Poplar Bluff.
In 2006, prompted in part by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina
in
New Orleans the year before, Congress provided funding for the corps to
inventory the levees it maintains or helps fund. That initial inventory is
complete, Halpin said.
Some of what was found was troubling. For example, corps levees in
Missouri
and Illinois that are supposed to protect against a 500-year flood fall
short of even 100-year protection, said Col. Lewis Setliff III, commander
of
the corps district in St. Louis. Getting those nine levees up to standard
would cost an estimated $200 million.
Last year, Congress passed the National Levee Safety Act, which for the
first time directed the corps to inventory all private levees. But so far,
Congress hasn't provided funding and won't likely do so until 2009 at the
earliest.
Still, the project is long overdue, said Susan Gilson, executive director
of
the Wa****ngton-based National Association of Flood & Stormwater Management
Agencies.
"No. 1, we have to identify all the levees," Gilson said. "We need to
identify where there are problems with the levees. Then the next stage
will
be repairs."
Flooding in March killed nearly two dozen people and damaged or destroyed
thousands of homes across a swath of Midwestern states. With the ground
saturated and rivers still running high, some worry that more flooding is
on
the way.
Just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis is the Wood River levee
in
Illinois, which protects a ConocoPhillips refinery. Flooding there could
spell an environmental and economic disaster.
Water seeped through the levee in 1993, but it held. Levee district
commissioner Leroy Emerick worries that the next big test might not go as
well.
Residents of the tony St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, Mo., already know
what happens if the Monarch Levee breaks.
It happened in 1993, sending the Missouri River surging into the region
known as the Chesterfield Valley. Within hours, muddy water reached the
rooftop at the popular Annie Gunn's restaurant - seven miles from the
river.
In those days, Annie Gunn's was among a few businesses in the valley.
Today,
the area is home to dozens of big box stores, shopping centers and
high-end
restaurants.
The development came after the Monarch levee was rebuilt to protect
against
a 500-year flood, meaning an area has a 1-in-500 chance of being flooded
to
a certain level in any given year. But David Human, a lawyer for the
Monarch
district, said there are still small sections of the levee that fall
short.
"By fall, we expect 98 percent of the levee system will be at the 500-year
level of protection. But guess what? That's not 100 percent," Human said.
Flooding in March nearly wiped out tiny Dutchtown, a community of 99
residents in southeast Missouri. Several waterways - the Castor and
Whitewater rivers and Hubble Creek - flow into what's known as the
diversion
channel there. Torrential rain caused a quick rise in water that tore
through a small, private levee.
Weeks after the flood, residents are still ripping out water-soaked carpet
and ruined furniture, cleaning debris from their yards, and power-wa****ng
mud caked from cars and siding.
"It was so much water at one time, and the levee couldn't handle it,"
resident Robert Reed, 72, said.
Halpin knows that another major flood would be more than many levees could
handle.
"It's not a question of if it will happen. It's a question of when and
where
it will happen," he said. "There are a lot of vulnerable spots in this
country."
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