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Committee to urge inventory of nation's levees
2008-12-11
ST. LOUIS - The United States needs a complete inventory of all levees and a national safety standard for the last line of defense against floods, say members of the National Committee on Levee Safety. "The flooding this year in the Midwest provided a good reminder to committee members of the importance of the task before us and the importance of getting a handle on our levee system," committee member Les Harder said Wednesday during a teleconference with the media. This summer, heavy rains led to record flooding in parts of Iowa and floods in Missouri and Illinois that approached record levels of 1993. Hundreds of private levees were breached or overtopped. While the Army Corps of Engineers completed an inventory of levees it maintains or helps fund, there is no such inventory of the thousands of private levees. Officials don't know how many there are or what shape they are in. Committee member Mike Stankiewicz, who is chief of flood control projects for the New York Department of Environment Conservation, said the task of inventorying every levee is daunting. For example, California alone has 14,000 miles of levees, and 80 percent of them are privately owned, he said. The committee wants levees placed into one of three risk categories -- high, significant or low -- depending upon factors like the number of people that could be flooded if the levee fails or is overtopped, the critical structures behind the levee and the depth of the potential flooding. The committee also sees a need for improvement in the way risk is defined. For example, a levee offering "100-year" protection means that there's a statistical 1-in-100 chance each year that floodwaters could exceed the levee's height. But some so-called 100-year levees in Missouri alone have been threatened or overtopped three times since 1993. "There is significant risk of flooding even at 100-year levels," Harder said. "We want to communicate all of the risks. We want to get away from the perception that some people have that if you have 100-year protection, you're not in a flood plain." The committee, which formed in 2007 and is chaired by the corps, will make recommendations to Congress in January. How quickly the levee inventory happens depends on how much money Congress approves and how fast it does it, said Eric Halpin, vice chairman of the committee.
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