The flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa over 700 feet above sea level, has been accurately compared to the flooding in New Orleans when levees breached during Katrina.
Also mirroring New Orleans is a Wisconsin town 1100 feet above sea level when an embankment of Lake Delton breached last week and emptied the lake into the nearby Wisconsin River. Add this to the January midnight levee breach in Fernley, Nevada, 4200 feet above sea level and a scenario is emerging that suggests levee failure and flooding is not just a New Orleans problem.
Founded after Katrina, Levees.Org has campaigned to educate the nation that what happened in New Orleans is a case of federally directed civil engineering failures, not a simple case of a natural disaster. We contend that the flooding during the August 2005 storm could have been avoided had levees been 2 feet higher and built to withstand a few hours of water overtopping them.
Responsibility for the design and construction of levees in New Orleans like most important levees in America belongs to the US Army Corps of Engineers. Levees.Org claims that what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere, but this problem is not being addressed.
There are more people in the state of California in danger of catastrophic levee failure than in the states of Texas, Louisiana and Florida combined.
So we have been clamouring for the 8/29 Investigation. Senate Bill 2826 filed by Senator Mary Landrieu D-LA is needed because the organization responsible for the levees, the US Army Corps of Engineers sponsored the original investigation as to why the levees failed, a conflict of interest.
Click here to write your members of Congress and demand the 8/29 Investigation.
Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.Org
www.levees.org
