Anxious wait on Midwest rivers: Which levee will be next to fail?
‘Catastrophic’ damage exposes stark weaknesses
As record-breaking floods swamped the Midwest this week, dozens of levees built to protect people from flooding have catastrophically failed. The destruction has caused billions of dollars in damage and exposed weaknesses in the country’s piecemeal approach to flood management.
Now, with an inland sea of water surging downstream, towns along the Missouri River and beyond are stacking up sandbags and wondering whether their own levees could be the next to fail. At least 50 levees have been breached or overtopped by rivers engorged with late-winter rains and snowmelt, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.
The failures have raised questions among residents about the durability of the flood system and renewed criticism from conservation groups who say that America’s scattershot approach to flood control and development near rivers is simply setting the stage for future disasters.
Counties in Iowa and Nebraska that were left underwater when the earthen walls of their levees caved in say that they have never seen such widespread damage to their flood-protection systems.
Some estimated the repair costs in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and said they had no idea how their rural communities could afford to rebuild them.
“It was catastrophic,” said Larry Hurst, director of emergency management in Mills County, Iowa, where there were eight breaches. “How are we going to fix it and who’s going to fix it?”
About 100,000 miles of levees stretch across the United States, most of them built of earth and covered with grass to protect the estimated 14 million people who live behind them, according to the National Committee on Levee Safety, which was set up by Congress in 2007.
But there is no single agency that regulates or monitors all of them, or even sets safety rules. Only about 14,800 miles of those are part of Corps programs, with the vast majority of the country’s levees falling under local or state control.
According to the National Committee on Levee Safety, there are no national policies or standards on levee safety, and there is no full assessment of their condition and performance. Only 10 states keep a list of their levees, and fewer than half have a state agency responsible for levee safety.
“We’ve adopted this piecemeal approach,” said Nicholas Pinter, a geology professor at the University of California, Davis. “We built these walls up to give the illusion of protection.”
The county’s levees held during 2011 floods that inundated towns across the Midwest, but “this is different,” said Hurst, the county’s emergency management director.
Heavy rains from what meteorologists called a “bomb cyclone” storm that ripped across the plains fell onto frozen ground, and instead of soaking in, the rains and snowmelt poured into tiny creeks, tributaries and into the Missouri River.
Scientists who study levees say the one certainty is they provide no absolute protection from flooding. Rhonda Wiley, the emergency director for Atchison County in northwest Missouri, said this week was a reminder.
“Everybody in the area, they understand that these levees can fail,” she said. “We’ve experienced it so many times.”