Wednesday, 15 August 2007
Levee Lessons Carry from Coast to Coast
« Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis | Main | The Impact of Infrastructure on our Daily Lives »I recently attended a California levee conference sponsored by ASCE's Sacramento Section and the Society of American Military Engineers. While I was there, I spent a day riding around the Sacramento and San Joaquin delta areas. The levees along the Sacramento, American and San Joaquin Rivers were built by farmers and settlers more than 100 years ago and since then, have not been properly modernized or adequately maintained to protect the population in the area today. In light of the recently released Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel (ERP) final report, it is important to look at the situation in California and try to incorporate the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina to prevent a possible disaster in the California delta.
The ERP report found that many of the failings of the Hurricane Protection System (HPS) dealt with questionable decisions and management choices, along with inadequate communications between organizations in relation to the disaster. We learned that the HPS was constructed as individual pieces, not as an interconnected system. It also appeared to operate as such. These findings relate to the challenge that California faces today as they are going through a lot of the same organizational issues. Last year, ASCE members in California released a report that gave the state's levees and flood control system a failing grade. It is clear that more work needs to be done to prepare this system for a natural disaster, whenever it may strike. That's why I believe that the ERP report provides a guide for cities like Sacramento to recognize what went wrong and ensure that improvements will be made to understand risk and embrace safety, revamp management practices and demand engineering quality in their region.
What else can communities, such as Sacramento, learn from what happened during Hurricane Katrina? What can they do now in their systems to prevent another disaster?