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The New Orleans Levee System Failure

Group 5: Lucas Schweighofer, Aurelio Paltera, Sinead O’Callahan, Aiden Lee

Period 2-3

8/31/22

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What happened?

  • New Orleans, Louisiana flooded as a result of floodwall and levee failures.
  • This was caused immediately after Hurricane Katrina (category 5) in 2005
  • This submerged 80% of the city
  • New Orleans is also under sea level (hard to get water back out after flood)

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What ethical issue lead to this?

The levees were only designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane to reduce the cost and save time

  • Better protection strategies were blocked by court orders
  • Water going over the walls was not considered in the design
  • Only some of the walls had concrete foundations, the rest on silt
  • Flood walls were built wrong with gaps that made them 25% less useful
  • Testing of the wall was flawed and missed multiple issues including the gaps

Concrete Foundation

Sand Foundation

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If these problems were solved, what would have changed?

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  • If the levees were built on a more solid base, like concrete, instead of sand they might have been able to withstand the hurricane
  • If the gaps in the flood walls weren't there the 25% more efficiency would have prevented a lot of the flooding
  • 800,000 houses / 160 billion dollars would have been saved

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How the system improved

Overall, they learned that the bare minimum is not enough when it comes to preparing for disasters. This lesson resulted in the following changes:

  • Improved drain infrastructure
    • Concrete that can drain water
    • More data on weakness
  • Increased funding
    • More training for workers
  • Improved standards for buildings
    • High wind rated roofing, etc.
    • Incentives to go beyond the minimum

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What can we learn from this?

  • Bad foundations of infrastructure can make it useless
  • A weak link can destroy the whole project
  • Budget constraints and bureaucracy lead to a disaster
  • Always plan for a higher stress than expected

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Thank you

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Source Cited

Sills, G. L. , P.E., M.ASCE1 ; N. D. Vroman, P.E.2 ; R. E. Wahl, P.E., M.ASCE3 ; and N. T. , et al. “Overview of New Orleans Levee Failures: Lessons Learned and Their Impact on National Levee Design and Assessment.” May 2008, http://www2.tulane.edu/~sanelson/New_Orleans_and_Hurricanes/overviewofleveefailures.pdf. Accessed 1 Sept. 2022.

“Hazards.” Infrastructure Failure-Levee Failure - NOLA Ready, https://ready.nola.gov/hazard-mitigation/hazards/infrastructure-failure-levee-failure/.

Roth, Lawrence. “The New Orleans Levees: The Worst Engineering Catastrophe in U.S. History – What Went Wrong and Why.” https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/climate/ocean-rise/against-the-deluge/01-new_orleans_levees.pdf. Accessed 1 Sept. 2022.