Posted on 9/2/2005, 7:38:04 PM by Hidalgo
Captain's Quarters has this tidbit from NY Times.
Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."
"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."
Sounds like that stupid DAM movie where the contractor pocketed money by reducing the strength of the DAM wall which collapsed under pressure.
Well, this was a story from the NY Times...
PC Kills.
Maybe they did the same thing I saw at NAS Key West. The concrete for a couple hangars was mixed with at best brackish water. You could put your hand through it in some places. The contractors went to prison.
When? I am waiting for Ted Hoppel and CNN to question the Mayor and Governor about this.
That's what i'm thinking. They went with the cheapest contractor and pocketed the difference?
The "Katrina Commission" will convene before the city is even pumped out....
As I understand it, the wall was backfilled by dirt. Once the water went over the top it eroded away the dirt. Once the dirt was eroded away the pressure of the water collapsed the concrete wall.
Let's see the analysis of the concrete....it wouldn't be the first time substandard stuff got substituted.
I don't know, but I heard a couple of times now that the section that broke was next on the list to be upgraded, and that the cost would have been $250 million, which had been allocated and then transferred to another project for the time being. They were still going to come back to this in the next budget season. That's the story.
Follow the link. This thread links to a blog quoting the NYT.
Well, I suggest you get some facts before casting aspersions. The water topping the levee fell several feet and eroded the foundation on the downstream side of the levee. I seem to remember it fell some 25 feet, but my memory may be in error, considering the number of posts I've seen about this lately. As the erosion continued, the water pressure on the canal side of the levee overpowered the reduced structural capacity of the weakened wall. If you want to perform an experiment, take a garden hose and spray it in a concentrated form on the ground around the foundation of your house and watch your house settle into the hole.
These baseless, unfounded accusations are similar to what I read on DU.
Can't say, but I am sure we are all going to learn a lot about sea level engineering projects in the next couple of years.
However, the statement "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick." is also true.
One of the posts earlier in the week had diagrams of the levee, and how it can fail. The concrete wall is set in clay.
The three examples were 1.) levee breaks outright, 2.) water pouring over the levee washes away the "earth" on the
backside, causing failure, and 3.) water pressure just soaks the underlying clay, causing it to give.
Maybe the cut corners on the concrete aprons on either side, or just substandard concrete for the wall itself?
Only $250 million? As I posted on another thread, the outlay for food stamps in Louisiana for their past fiscal year was $665 million.
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