Little protection

July 03, 2008 04:01 pm

— Despite the failures of levees in the Midwest this summer and in New Orleans in 2005, the series of floodwalls and levees that protect Ashland, Catlettsburg, Huntington, Ironton and local communities from the rising waters of the Ohio River are safe.
That’s according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which is in charge of inspecting and overseeing the maintenance of floodwalls and levees in this region.
Most of the floodwalls and levees in this region were built following the devastating floods in January of 1937, when the Ohio River crested at 74.2 feet. Since then, the highest the river has risen was 65.9 feet in April of 1948.
However, even in the unlikely event of a flood similar to the one in 1937, Peggy Noel, a spokesperson for the Corps of Engineers, said area floodwalls and levees could hold back the waters. “There’s no reason they couldn’t withstand the level for which they were designed,” Noel said.
Ashland is mostly protected by floodwalls, with a few earthen levees near the Ashland Town Center. Levees are more common in Ironton and Catlettsburg.
Although it is convinced that the local floodwalls and levees are safe, Noel said the Corps is considering a more extensive inspection schedule with an interdisciplinary team of engineers and scientists inspecting and assessing the system at least once every five years. That’s an excellent idea.
If the floodwalls and levees are in need of major repairs, we need to know about it before it is too late. Of course, federal and local officials knew the levees protecting New Orleans were in need of major repairs but still redirected money intended to make those repairs to fund other more visible projects — the kind of projects that earn politicians votes, not boring maintenance projects that make mostly invisible repairs to what is already there.
If the levees and floodwalls in this area are safe — and we certainly hope they are — then they apparently are the exception to the rule. In fact, overall, the condition of levees may be the country’s greatest unmet infrastructure need, especially because climate change models forecast an increase in the intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall storms, and because people insist on building on flood plains.
Scripps Howard News Service reporters Lee Bowman and Thomas Hargrove recently reviewed the level of levee oversight and funding and their findings were anything but comforting:
‰ No one at any level of government knows where all the levees are, let alone what kind of shape they are in, or even how many there are. Estimates range from 20,000 to 30,000.
‰ Maintenance of the levees, even those operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, is years and billions of dollars behind schedule. By one estimate, there is a $60 billion backlog of work but federal funding amounts to only $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year.
‰ Relatively few new levees are being built. Those that are being built don’t protect existing homes and businesses but allow for development on flood plains, which flies in the face of all sensible flood control policy. In the St. Louis area, some 28 square miles containing $2.2 billion in new construction is on land that was under water 15 years ago. And some new developments are protected by old agricultural levees built to the lesser standard of protecting farmland.
‰ The country lacks a uniform national flood control policy. The Army Corps doesn’t even have the legal authority to inspect suspect levees outside the federal system.
How many more floods and hurricanes will it take before the nation wakes up and realizes that the boring work of maintaining floodwalls and levees is critical?
Personally, we’re both relieved and elated to learn our floodwalls and levees are safe. We’re sure folks in Iowa and New Orleans envy us.