When Good News Turns To Tagedy


Recently, US Senator Jim Inhofe was jubilant over bringing home federal funding ––$137 million––for a levee project in his home state of Oklahoma.

Senator Inhofe is rightly happy about this news. Funding for lifesaving levees is of the utmost importance.

Exactly thirty years ago, an equally jubilant US Senator J. Bennett Johnston had just brought home $50 million from the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers for levee improvements in New Orleans.An equally triumphant Orleans Levee Board called for a press conference to announce the news.

But what the board members didn’t know was that the US Army Corps of Engineers would proceed to build flimsy floodwalls that crumbled at half the pressure they were designed to contain when Hurricane Katrina arrived 14 years later.

The levee board members in Oklahoma would do well to pay close attention to the Corps of Engineers. If not, good news can turn to tragedy.

Almost no engineering students in the nation are being taught about the 2005 levee breach disaster of New Orleans. Please sign our petition requesting that engineering disasters and their causes be taught in engineering schools.

ADD YOUR NAME TO OUR PETITION.

Learn more about the Tulsa Levee Project.

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