The Army Corps of Engineers, accused of building substandard levees and floodwalls that failed when Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast in 2005, has spent $56 million since then developing the initial phase of a national levee inventory as required by Congress. The Corps on Thursday was releasing a database with information about nearly 14,000 miles of levees under its jurisdiction.
However, the inventory does not include what is believed to be more than 100,000 additional miles of levees not covered by the Corps‘ safety program. Some are little more than mounds of earth piled up more than a century ago to protect farm fields. Others extend for miles and are made of concrete and steel, with sophisticated pump and drainage systems. They shield homes, businesses and infrastructure such as highways and power plants.
The National Committee on Levee Safety, established after the Katrina disaster to evaluate the system and recommend improvements, issued a report in 2009 calling for the Corps to catalog and inspects every levee so deficiencies could be fixed. However, officials say Congress has not provided enough authority or money to add non-federal levees to the database, a massive undertaking that would take years.
With more cuts expected to come down from the bi-partisan “super committee”, some expect levees in Louisiana to break once again.
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