Posted on 11/10/2005 9:28:36 AM PST by Incorrigible
It is indeed a complex subject and you are doing great work in keeping it organized. I appreciate your efforts greatly!
The last engineer we elected president was James Earl Carter.
Yes, that's a valid concern, seepage under the berm(or roadway). At least two solutions : a clay berm as a base instead of the silt/gumbo they have now, which means importing HUGE amounts of impervious clay on barges over many years(for 300 miles of levees around N.O,); or deep concrete walls, say 6 to 10 ft deep(8" thick), on both sides of the roadway(from 20 to 25 ft wide), basically a big post-tensioned box beam that has buoyancy in and of itself. Thus it would exert little weight-pressure on the gumbo as you'd have vertical dead man anchors holding it down against that positive buoyancy. That still leaves the problem of a road panel strong enough to carry semitrucks yet light enough to pop right up, via buoyancy and side piano hinges, in a tsunami wave, that's what I'm designing right now... The objective, in this instance, is a ring road entirely around a re-built New Orleans that provides a 20 to 25 ft high sea wall for any future hurricane storm surge; and it operates automatically by natural forces. W=P
Best wishes in your endeavour!
Would it be possible to dig wells to pump some of the water out of the swamped earth.
Thanks. It doesn't do any good to draw up sketches, I invented this idea 4 years ago and sent it to Des Moines and FEMA : nothing. Then again to 9 coastal states transportation depts recently(NH/NJ/NC/SC/GA/FL/MS/OR/WA) : nothing but a minor "we'll forward it" from OR. Large bureaucracies are 80% human dead wood so I figure the only way thru the hardened shell of ignorance/inertia is with a scale model/video tape it in action, and send it to governors of coastal states. If they STILL want to drown in a hurricane storm surge or tsunami, hey that's fine w/me, I live at 3000 ft elevation here in MT. So, back to work on the FLOOD ROAD model...
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