Fixing U.S. levees an aim with little action
Goals to improve levees in the United States after Hurricane Katrina largely haven’t been met, federal officials say.
The Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 required federal agencies to take certain steps to address the soundness of levees, but officials with those agencies say a lack of funding has prevented them from doing it.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has met only the requirement that it continue developing the National Levee Database, which details levee locations and conditions, according to a federal Government Accountability Office report released in July.
The Corps and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have failed to implement anything else.
“The biggest problem is the Corps has never been funded for anything other than the database,” said Laurie Driver, a spokesman for the Corps in Little Rock.
In 2009, the National Committee on Levee Safety — established by Congress in 2007 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — recommended that agencies devise programs to support the nation’s levees, the GAO report said.
While the Corps has a set of standards for levees and uses it when conducting levee inspections, no standards exist for the initial construction and maintenance of levees.
So in June 2014, then-President Barack Obama signed into law the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, which required FEMA and the Corps to jointly establish voluntary levee guidelines and provide incentives for nonfederal entities to promote levee soundness, the GAO report said.
Many of the aims haven’t been addressed. Among them, according to the report, are creating a system for classifying hazard potential; assisting states and tribes in developing levee-soundness programs; and submitting a report detailing levee conditions, the effectiveness of levee-safety programs and any possible congressional fixes.
Elmo Webb, levee safety program manager for the Corps in Little Rock, said his office is trying to better educate levee district officials on the risks of not properly maintaining their levee. His office also is working with other federal agencies, and state and county governments on the National Levee Database.
The database currently includes only federal levees, levees that were built by federal authorities and turned over to local governments, and levees that were once part of the Corps’ voluntary Rehabilitation and Inspection Program.
Officials said the database includes major levees in the U.S. but likely only a small percentage of the nation’s total levees.
Webb said that although some levees along major rivers may not be listed, he suspects that most of the levees that aren’t accounted for are ones built by farmers.
The Corps and FEMA created the Flood Protection Structure Accreditation Task Force to align the two agencies’ levee programs. The Corps has the Levee Safety Program. FEMA has the National Flood Insurance Program on levee accreditation.
The FEMA program is not a safety standard, according Suzanne Vermeer, senior levee subject matter expert at FEMA. It’s just a depiction of risk, she said, noting that the Corps and FEMA have “very different roles and very different goals.”