This weekend's Rising Tide 2 conference included one presentation that was worth seeing and listening to a second time (or a first if you didn't make it). The current president of the Louisiana chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave an unofficial presentation on his employer's work to revamp our levee system. Tim of Tim's Nameless Blog works for the Army Corps of Engineers and was more than willing to give us an insider's perspective of what Katrina was and how the Corps in fulfilling a congressional mandate to repair and update our levee system to 1% flood strength.

Wait, you may be wondering what that 1% flood strength is. You see the strength of a levee system is determined by the amount of water it can hold and the type of storm is can take. In this case our levees need to take a 100 year storm event or a 1% storm. A 100 year event doesn't occur only once a hundred years instead there is a 1 percent chance of it happening every year no matter whether one happened recently or not (see the video for a better explanation).

Tim says the levee repair will make a major difference in Gentilly and Chalmette but not much in Kenner. He also encourages us to push for levees more like the ones in the Netherlands. The Dutch are ready for a 10,000 year storm and even protect their least important land against a 1,200 year storm. But that is cause most of the country could be under water at anytime so they actually realize the importance of flood protection. We have yet to convince the country that we are that important, although you would think our status as a major port city and oil producer and gas refiner and historic city would help, but I guess not (yet).

See the full six part presentation as YouTube videos on the First Draft blog.

Image via my Flickr feed

What's going on here? Why am I posting so much? Today, in honor of Katrina I am attempting another 24 hour 24 post blogathon.