US Flooding Epidemic: Natural Disaster or Sloppy Engineering?

More levees in the Midwest over 500 feet above sea level breached yesterday. With over 40% percent of the American population living in counties protected by levees, the national flood protection group Levees.Org questions the widely held notion that New Orleans' levee breaches were due simply to its low lying geography.

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

New Orleans, LA (PRWEB) June 19, 2008 -- Levees 500 feet above sea level breached yesterday in Gulfport, Illinois. Flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa over 700 feet above sea level, has been accurately compared to the flooding in New Orleans. And a January midnight levee breach in Fernley, Nevada was 4200 feet above sea level.

The flood protection group Levees.Org feels these scenarios suggest that levee failure and flooding is not a distinctly New Orleans problem.

Over 40% percent of the American population lives in counties protected by levees according to the Association of State Flood Plain Managers.

The 20,000 member group Levees.Org founded after disastrous levee breaches during Hurricane Katrina 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.

They contend that the flooding in New Orleans during the August 2005 storm could have been avoided had levees been at the right height, and had they been built to withstand a few hours of water overtopping them.

Responsibility for the design and construction of levees in New Orleans like most of the 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," says Sandy Rosenthal, Founder of Levees.Org. "Levee failure is not just a New Orleans issue."

As a public service,Levees.Org has created a searchable data base so citizens anywhere in the nation can find out if they are at risk of flooding by going to AreWeAtRisk.com and simply typing in their zip code.

The group has been clamouring for the 8/29 Investigation Act document filed by Senator Mary Landrieu D-LA because the organization responsible for the levees, the US Army Corps of Engineers sponsored the official investigation as to why the levees failed. That, says Levees.Org is a conflict of interest.

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Levees.Org was founded in November of 2005 by Sandy Rosenthal, 51 and her son Stanford, now 17 while living in Lafayette, Louisiana after evacuating from New Orleans. They returned to the city and grew the organization to over 20,000 members. The non partisan grassroots group's mission is education that metro New Orleans was destroyed not by a natural disaster, but by the worst engineering failure in the world since Chernobyl.

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