Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘Hurricane Katrina’

St Bernard Levee System


Warning: Use of undefined constant gad_content_tag_filter_replace - assumed 'gad_content_tag_filter_replace' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/dx87kwtjkt0i/public_html/wp-content/plugins/web-ninja-google-analytics/webninja_ga.php on line 1813

Just south of the entrance  to St Bernard State Park on LA 39 in St Bernard Parish, Louisiana is the Army Corps of Engineer’s newly completed 8.5-mile-long floodwall between Verret and Caernarvon.

These images are from on the adjacent and perpendicular Mississippi River levee  below the new floodwall.

The entire parish of 60,000 people was flooded in August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit. The area’s population has not recovered.

Before the storm, the corps says the average height of the levee system was 14 feet. Now, they stand at between 27 feet and 32 feet.

On the unprotected side of the Verret-Caenarvon levee is the community of Braithwaite and Plaquemines Parish protected by an 8 foot levee.

The contrasts between the two adjacent levees will be stark. The private levees protecting the Braithwaite community on Plaquemines’ Eastbank stand at just 8 feet. Those levees were overtopped in 2008 during Hurricane Gustav.

The levees from Verret to Caernarvon in the St. Bernard system will tower an estimated 26 feet.

This is the big picture.

28 Feb 2012