how is the levee doing in your area? do you even know if there is a levee

[ensho]

in your area? better find out, sooner rather then later.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080512/ap_on_re_us/river_levees;_ylt=AgcJUGBbCWCxoFvKLBc7zaKs0NUE


Army Corps says Condition of many levees a mystery


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.

-snip-

"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.

-snip-

Today, about 2,000 levees are either operated by the corps or by local entities in partnership 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.

-snip-

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.
-snip-
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look folks, the govt. is not going to check the levees - you all better do it yourself. that hill you see all the time, just might be a levee.

[Warpy]

1. We don't have levees. We have diversion channels

which are the old arroyos and dry washes that have been lined with concrete and fitted with gear to help the fire department rescue kids who play in them without watching for storms on the mountain.

Flood control is a huge thing out here in the desert, but ours are flash floods from higher altitude storms. I've seen a few inches of water in arroyos sweep castoff refrigerators and unlucky cars downstream; I once saw an entire wooden garden shed going down a diversion channel.

A few bad apple developers on the edge of town filled in some of the arroyos so that their mcmansions would have bigger yards. They got away with it for years when we were in severe drought, but those years ended with the wet summer of 2006 and those fancy houses are now sitting next to big ditches instead of the patios and outdoor kitchens they once sported. It was quite a scandal.

The one thing everybody needs to know is that water always wins, whether it's a leak in the roof or a bad gutter or a pinhole in a pipe or a river with a flood plain.

[ensho]

2. the power of water going down hill is something else!

the other day the mountians in Thailand had 17 hrs. straight of heavy rain.

HUGE landslides, floods, destruction, death.

regular rain and flood they expected but not 17 hrs. worth.

if our mts. melt fast this spring - -