Jeudi

New Orleans Levees Failing!!!
'This Little Wet Spot' alarms experts~In this area, water seeps under the levee of the 17th Street Canal levee, background, Tuesday, May 20, 2008, in New Orleans. Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.
~“I personally do not at all believe that this little wet spot is anything that is going to cause a breach or a failure of any kind,” Donald Jolissaint, chief of the corps’ technical support branch in New Orleans.
License: PE.0020426
Listed Disciplines: CE
Status: ACTIVE
Expiration Date: 3/31/2009
Mr. Donald E. Jolissaint
PELSB

"It is all based on a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking, and it means that when they wake up to this one — really — our cost is going to increase significantly,"
said Bob Bea, a civil engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.
~~Robert G. Bea is professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has 43 years of experience as a marine coastal and offshore engineering industry consultant and research scientist. He has successfully developed and implemented more than 40 significant industry- and government-funded cooperative research programs. Mr. Bea, a former member of the NRC Marine Board, has served on numerous national and international research and advisory committees, including seven NRC committees. He is currently a member of the Committee on Human Performance, Organizational Systems and Maritime Safety and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He conducts research on human and organizational factors and on design, construction, and operation of marine structures. Mr. Bea has a B.S. degree in civil engineering and a M.S. degree in engineering from the University of Florida.
AP Photo/Bill Haber~Hat T'n'T-dsbnola

Demand safe levees! Demand the 8/29 Investigation! Saturday, May 31 is our Day of Action!

Corps of Engineers addressing repairs made during rapid-response phase~March 9th Times Picayune~"We are going to finish these repairs, but I don't think a 1-inch separation between a floodwall and a slab of concrete 10 to 20 feet wide would let enough water in to cause a catastrophic failure," said Kevin Wagner, the corps' senior project manager for levees and floodwalls in Orleans Parish. Editilla cannot find this creep's engineering certification anywhere. I did find out from the ASCE that he has not been an active member of the ASCE since 1995 and even then had only an "affiliate" membership apprently reserved for non'engineers. This is the man who signed on stuffing the levees with newspaper?
To quote the founder of Levees.org, Sandy Rosenthal: "Protecting New Orleans from catestrophic flooding ain't rocket science--it is geo-technic science."
"Most of that (Task Force) Guardian work was just done so fast that I don't know how much design or forethought could have gone into it," said Larry Ardiron, director of the state transportation department's Hurricane Protection Operations, "I think they're probably doing the best they can, and they probably have too much to do, but sometimes they do things that just don't make sense."
Poor Editilla just needs to hear from an engineer goddamn it.

Flood of Criticism
~Berkley Science Review
“If it had been built as it should have been built, we would be repairing some shingles and mopping up some wet carpets.” Thus Dr. Robert Bea, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, sums up the flood control system in New Orleans and its failure during Hurricane Katrina. But rather than merely tearing off some shingles and soaking carpets, Katrina wreaked its by now all-too-familiar devastation, flooding around 80 percent of New Orleans, killing over 1,500 people, displacing far more, and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage. Bea is part of a team of investigators based at UC Berkeley that has spent the last year trying to figure out exactly what went so horribly wrong during Katrina. The team’s conclusions, published July 31, 2007 in the 1,300 page, Independent Levee Investigation Team Final Report, are a scathing criticism of the engineering and organizational failures preceding the 2005 disaster—a disaster, they argue, that could have been prevented. Moving toward a brighter future, they say, will require nothing less than a total overhaul of the system that creates and maintains flood protection infrastructures not just in New Orleans, but in the United States as a whole. Image courtesy of USGS.

A writer's take on the new New Orleans lest we forget to know what it means when levees fail

Why a Gulf Wetland May Become a City~Lessons from Hurricane Katrina have been quickly forgotten as developers plan to turn an important wetland in the region's fourth largest city.~"If we don't nip this [project] in the bud, the pressure will be to develop more and more, and the Corps is critical to stopping that," says Bob Davis, a former Corps engineer and an agency critic.

Jindal-backed voucher bill for New Orleans advances

Post-Katrina Tax Shelter Expiring When It Is Most Needed

NetSquared Mashup Challenge: Bringing Together Government, Nonprofit and Grassroots GIS in the City of New Orleans
~Alan Gutierrez

nola~a tee, a rock, a cloud

School Group Heads To New Orleans

Preserving New Orleans
~Eureka Dejavu

Foodies, sidewalks and the rest of it

Meet Mr. Paul Konar, hunger strike strongman

Comforting Traumatized Rescue Animals

Go Leveeland!

Summer Festivals in Louisiana 2008~misc New Orleans stuff