Levees.org to Speak to Visitors from Iraq in State Dept Program

Friday, September 28th, 2012

Today, Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org will speak to a group of six visitors from Iraq who will be studying the U.S. Political Process.

The visitors are invited to the United States under the auspices of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. The participants include the legal advisor to the Iraqi Republican Gathering political party, the Vice Chancellor of Maysan University and Manager of the Thi-Qar Investigation Office, Commission of Integrity.

The agency in Washington facilitating their visit specifically requested an opportunity to meet with a representative of Levees.org, and wanted it to be a top priority.

Read More » Leave a comment

Army Corps of Engineers’ Suppression of Public Comments

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Today, we learned that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has banned the receipt of all public comments submitted through the widely used advocacy system called Convio.

While Levees.org uses SalsaLabs, a different system, we are still appalled at this suppression of public comments. We applaud the National Wildlife Federation for calling on the Corps today to immediately lift this ban.

On September 17th, the Army Corps sent an email update to NWF explaining that due to the number of emails received by the General during preparation for Hurricane Isaac, the IT department Email Team immediately instituted a rule for the incoming gateway servers to drop all emails from any Convio system. The rule was instituted on August 25th and the emails sent throughout the rest of the public comment period cannot be retrieved. NWF was never notified. On September 20th, the Army Corps let NWF know that the rule was still in effect and an anticipated date for lifting the rule could not be offered.

Read More » 1 Comment

Isaac is no shade of Katrina

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

Lake Borgne Surge Barrier designed and built after Hurricane Katrina to keep storm surge from entering the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal

For New Orleans, the brand new federal flood protection held back Hurricane Isaac’s storm surge.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers has announced that it will run computer models to determine whether the new system of stronger levees, new gates and structures may have exacerbated flooding in areas outside the system.

Isaac was a more unusual storm. We don’t recall a recent storm coming from the direction that Isaac did. The wind over Lake Pontchartrain was going the opposite direction than Katrina which causes water to surge west of the city. This creates a different flooding pattern.  While it does not look like the new higher structure came into play, it is possible.  This is a complex issue and modelers need to obtain actual  surge height numbers to answer the question of whether the new structure contributed to flooding elsewhere.

Read More » Leave a comment