Friday, June 20, 2008

Of Floods and Levees — 2

Others are taking notice.

With the increasing number of levees that are failing along the Mississippi, it is become more and more apparent that someone has grossly underestimated the potential for disaster. Even our own Pueblo Chieftain has noticed.

What’s caught our notice is that some levees built along the Mississippi River and its tributaries have been breached, letting floodwaters pour into areas that otherwise might have been considered safe. And we’ve heard an echo of this right here in Pueblo.

Considering what we’ve witnessed of late vis-a-vis the disasters in Peppersauce Bottoms, we look at the Fountain and have to wonder just how safe our system is.

This is especially true when we look at the I-25 overpass at 13th Street, as the Fountain flows by a few yards to the east. There is NO levee there. Just as there was no levee on the road running beside a river as it flowed past Cedar Rapids. I captured a photo from the Fox News article. I wish I could provide it here, but I’m concerned about copyright violations. Suffice it to say that someone piled up heaps of dirt and some sandbags at a low point in the highway, in an act of desperation, to keep the river within it’s banks. The photograph shows the river having breached the makeshift levee and flowing across the road.

It’s pathetic. It’s the quintessential example of the Six Ps; Army Staff puke axiom about Piss Poor Planning.

This brings me to my forthcoming query to the Pueblo County Emergency Management Department. As a member of the Pueblo Area Council Of Governments (PACOG) Environmental Policy Advisory Committee (EPAC), at their next regular meeting I will call for the County emergency management people to explain the following:

[1] What are the levees along the Arkansas and Fountain rated to withstand?
[2] What data and/or parameters were used in the formulation of the 100-year and 500-year flood estimates?
[3] How do those parameters match up against the event in Iowa and Illinois of the last few weeks?
[4] What were the levees that failed in Iowa and Illinois rated to withstand?
[5] What are the written plans to deal with flooding in the Arkansas and Fountain?

I think we need to see how our County government is prepared to deal with this sort of crisis. After all….we’re getting into the range of another 100-year event. The flood of 1921’s 100-year anniversary is not that far off.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Of Floods and Levees

How safe are our levees?

Over the last few years, we’ve heard some reports of serious problems with our system of levees. We have the disaster in New Orleans where the levees—which had not been properly upgraded—were demolished by Hurricane Katrina. Now we see Cedar Rapids and Des Moines experiencing similar disasters because the levees were not up to the task.

In the former, it was a major storm lashing the works. In this iteration, it’s just an awful lot of water that is higher than the Corps of Engineers seem to have anticipated. And this is supposedly the proverbial 500-year flood.

It makes me wonder whether or not our levees, along the Fountain are up to this sort of flood. Or are they, as appears in Iowa, only built for the 100-year sort of flood.

There’s a picture up on Fox News showing where one of the two ‘breaks’ in levees occurred in Des Moines. And guess what….there WAS no levee there. Except for the few piles of pathetic dirt someone tried to shove on the edge of the road. Personally, I’m seeing what local Emergency Management might attempt at the I25 overpass at 13th Street, vis-a-vis the Fountain. Some dirt piled up to face a 100-year flood and it not holding up to the challenge of the moment. Let alone a 500-year deluge. And it makes me wonder….what would happen to the Northside neighborhoods and businesses. Or downtown business for that matter.

I’d like to see the Pueblo County Emergency Management Department plans to deal with such an emergency.

Hopefully, they’re a bit more comprehensive than sending the police through the neighborhood telling people to get out over a bullhorn pointed out the window of their cruiser…..

UPDATE Another One Busted [141616 Jun 08]: Fox News reports another levee, this one on the Mississippi River as it passes Illinois, has busted.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The Pueblo Chieftain Gives a Dam…

...a good rep.

It’s good to see the Chieftain giving a dam on the Fountain a good write-up this morning.

Monday’s little New Orleans in Pueblo, vis-a-vis the break in the old levee. Reminded me of the old levee in New Orleans that failed when they had their storm problem.

And we can all be thankful that this problem manifested itself now, while it was relatively small, instead of later, when it could have been so much worse….think 1921.

Global warming is a fact. [Note: Human contribution to it is an issue, to be discussed in a different venue/thread.] The effects of it are up for considerable discussion. But it seems we’re getting a bit more water here, along the Front Range.  And, with all the construction that has gone on in Colorado Springs, we’re getting more flow down the Fountain than we had some 50 years ago.

As a result, we certainly need to pay more attention to the way the Fountain is ‘growing’ and the levees we have in place to manage that growth.

However, the articles and editorials in the Chieftain are highlighting an interesting train of thought on that management. A dam on the Fountain.

I’ve thought this to be a great idea since I mentioned it to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy meeting a few years back. This, during their public forum period. I think it interesting that one of the impanelled subject matter experts started scribbling notes when I mentioned the idea.

At any rate, a dam on the Fountain, between here and C’Springs would serve a multitude of purposes.

[1] Flood prevention.
[2] A settling pond for effluent form C’Springs.
[3] Back-up water supply.
[4] Reuse of water.
[5] Recreation.

These are obvious. However, less obvious are the additional benefits.

Take, for example, what happens to the water coming out of such a dam.

More...

Thursday, October 13, 2005

An Evening At the Open House

Our friends at CH2MHill host a small party.

Attended the New Pueblo Freeway Open House last night. It was hosted by our friends at CH2MHill at the behest of CDOT.

The topic of the overall program was Pueblo’s heritage vis-a-vis that part of which was under potential threat of being demolished or at least degraded as part of the proposed plan to widen Interstate 25 as it passes through the center of the city.

There was a cute series of presentations by 8th-graders from Beulah School on the history of Colorado, stemming from the initial exploration by Coronado, in his vain effort to find the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, through the founding of CF&I from three competing steel/metal smelting operations. Each of the kids was dressed in attire apropos for their part of the presentation. Personally, I found part of it informative, as I’m a service brat and learned all about Louisiana history, being there at that age. However, I get the impression that the natives were getting a re-bluing—as we’d say in the Army—of stuff they’d known all their lives.

I am curious why they had to go to a charter school in Beulah to get these children. But that’s another question, better asked of Christian Piatt and Kitty Kennedy, who are running for D-60 school board.

Back on topic….

I had hoped that our friends from CH2MHill would have spent a bit of time at the lectern bringing us up to speed on changes to their plans and the current state of affairs with respect to the timeline on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA), both of which are essential to the overall project. But we didn’t hear anything specific.

In order to learn about those activities we had to go to the boards and beat the bushes.

The boards did have information about the timeline for the EIS, but nothing specific that I could see about who was doing what with it right now. There was no one at that particular board to ‘beat about the bush’ with in order to find out.

Looking that the boards on the planned widening of the interstate, it was not readily apparent what had changed since our friends from CH2MHill had last shown us what was planned. I had to ‘beat about the bush’ with the guy there for details. He did point out that some rainwater collection ponds had been added to the plans. This in an effort to prevent localized flooding in the event of another deluge we have every Summer. [Note: With respect to these intermittent ponds, I would like to make a suggestion on how to use them for two purposes. I see a potential recreational use for them when they are not being used for their original purpose. More on that later.]

The gentleman working that board could not identify much else in the way of changes. I would like CH2MHill to highlight any changes they’ve made to their plan as we saw it last year, just so we can catch up to them. We all studied their plans last year. But we’ve slept since then. They’ve slept WITH their plans. We’d like to get up to their level of familiarity.

There was a board about the plans for Mineral Palace Park. However, I did not see anyone I could talk to about any changes to the plans to mitigate the impacts I-25 has had in the past and will have in the future on that district park. Looking over the plans, I did not see anything that jumped out at me as a significant change to what we had seen described before.

There was no board nor any person to beat about the bush with over the status of the IGA. However, I did catch wind that the IGA was being discussed. I think it would be VERY nice if our friends at CH2MHIll would bring us up to speed on the IGA process. Where it is. Who is doing what. And allow some of us to kibitz on the meetings.

It was nice of CH2MHill to invite us to their open house. The children were, as all children dressed-up, rehearsed and trotted before serious adults are, charming. Some good information was provided. A lot of necessary information was not.

In all honesty, I still think this whole project is going to be significantly impacted by the proposed Super-Slab to the east of town. The Slab is coming. It’s much more needed than this project, in my personal opinion. But that’s another essay.