Last year will be remembered as a time of record-breaking floods that tested hundreds of levees, inundated riverfront communities and ruined thousands of acres of crops. Nearly seven years after Hurricane Katrina called attention to the decay facing the nation’s aging levee systems we have made little progress in addressing its root causes.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been repairing and upgrading structures in New Orleans and assessing levee systems nationwide, lack of sustained Congressional attention and federal funding have stalled many of their plans.

Every month they are delayed represents a threat to safety and economic viability for the communities that rely on these levees.
 

The situation is dire. USACE began assessing levee systems after Hurricane Katrina and found more than 300 of them generally deficient. FEMA has stated that just 7 percent of the country's 100,000 miles of levees were adequate to protect their communities from a 100-year flood event.

FEMA previously set a deadline of two years for deficient systems to be repaired or replaced. The areas protected by levees that did not meet the standard would be declared vulnerable, and FEMA would re-draw the flood insurance rate maps as if the levees didn't exist. While many of the affected communities set about repairing their levee systems, two years was simply not long enough to complete the necessary work — especially given the difficult economic conditions across the country. Requiring these previously exempted residents and businesses to buy potentially prohibitively expensive flood insurance would have been like pouring salt into deep financial wounds.

The agency agreed in 2011 to cancel its deadline in favor of a less dramatic solution. That's a step in the right direction. But the work can't be put off indefinitely; the communities with vulnerable levees are in great danger, as we clearly see now. It's past time to put a better, more collaborative, efficient and effective solution in place.

A three-pronged approach is needed to get this issue the attention and funding it deserves:

1. OMB must release levee safety report to Congress
The 2007 Water Resources Development Act called for establishing standards to assess levees across the country and recommended steps for moving forward. It also called for a National Committee on Levee Safety to coordinate the exchange of information among federal and nonfederal entities concerning the implementation of levee safety guidelines. The committee recognized the need for a broader national flood-risk management approach and submitted 20 specific recommendations for a national levee safety program. Fundamentally, it's a state-funded and -managed levee improvement program based on federal-level policy. It also includes an education program to inform the public about the dangers of living in a flood-risk area.

Due to funding obstacles, the Office of Management and Budget still has not released the January 2009 National Committee on Levee Safety report to Congress. It is imperative that the OMB release the report to spur a national dialogue on how to address the crisis facing U.S. levee systems and the people, business and communities they protect. While traditional funding will remain an issue, we can't begin to innovate engineering solutions and seek alternate funding mechanisms unless and until Congress gives additional attention to the subject.

2. Establish modern procedures for determining flood protection levels
Rather than simply determining whether a levee system is fully capable of withstanding a 100-year flood event or completely decertifying it, the engineering community should move quickly to determine an agreeable "short-term" level of flood protection. Working in partnership with FEMA, the American Council of Engineering Companies and the American Society of Civil Engineers, water resource professionals can develop an empirical process based on visual surveys and limited geotechnical inspections to assess the current protection level. With this process in place, FEMA and USACE can establish appropriate criteria and incentives for levee owners and operators to identify and address the most critical problems. Using this information, communities also can begin to put in place long-term solutions, such as relocation alternatives, before their homes and businesses are threatened again.

In fact, ASCE has previously recommended:

• Amending the certification rule to allow a professional engineer to certify only that the levee is in compliance with National Flood Insurance Program standards.
• FEMA adopt a hazard-ranking system for NFIP rating maps that is based on either the maximum flood that likely will be experienced in an area (the Probable Maximum Flood) or a locally established plan for development, land use, building codes and emergency preparedness (especially related to warning, evacuation and risk communication).
• Creating an efficient and orderly system of indemnification for the inevitable losses when levees fail or are overtopped.

3. Consider funding alternatives
It's highly likely that the lack of adequate regional and federal funding will continue to create a major obstacle to repairing our levees. Partisan politics, deficit concerns and many competing social needs will keep both levee assessments and levee repairs at the bottom of the nation’s priority list.

One part of the solution would be for Congress to authorize an alternate use for USACE's Flood Control and Emergency Funding and to give this resource a higher priority for funding. This pool of $150 million or more could be directed toward identifying the most critical levee weaknesses as measured by loss of life as well as economic impact, assessing them using criteria established by FEMA.

Public-private funding is a viable option for funding the repairs these assessments reveal. It's an option the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, USACE, the U.S. Department of Energy and others are being urged to test with small, local pilot projects.

For example, let's say a community had $5 billion in real estate not currently subject to flood insurance. If FEMA decertified its levee system, that real estate suddenly would become subject to flood insurance requirements at a cost of $50 million to $150 million a year. By contrast, bringing the system up to a 100-year flood protection level would cost just $75 million or less. With the right investment structure, repairing the levees could be a wise private investment that would benefit the entire community.
 

Katrina was a catalyst for renewed and reinvigorated attention to levee system adequacies seven years ago. The floods of 2012 may once again heightening our focus on this critical issue. Let's not allow another seven years to pass before we take definitive action. Too many lives and too many dollars are at stake.

Rob Vining is national director water resources practice at HNTB Corporation and serves as a consultant to federal,
state and municipal flood management agencies on levee policy and engineering challenges.
 

HNTB expert contact information:

Rob Vining
National Director Water Resources Practice
HNTB Corporation
(703) 296-3235
Email: rvining@hntb.com

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