Midwestern flood damage could have been limited if a patchwork of levees along the Mississippi River had been more uniformly managed—a recommendation made 15 years ago in an expert report prompted by the 1993 flooding.
Gerald E. Galloway Jr., former Army Corps of Engineer brigadier General and chairman of the report committee, said last week damage could have been minimized if the levees—which are aging, differ in material and construction, and maintained by various groups, government agencies, and individuals—were centrally managed, according to a report in the New York Times.
“We told them there were going to be more floods like this,” Galloway told the Times. “Everybody likes to go out and shake hands on the levee now and offer sandbags, but that’s not helpful. This shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
Galloway, now Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor of Engineering and Affiliate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, will give a keynote speech titled “Working with Aging and Unknown Levees: Who Has the Ball?” at the 33rd Annual Hazards Research and Applications Workshop next week.
Read the full text of the Times article online.
Jolie Breeden is the lead editor and science communicator for Natural Hazards Center publications. She writes and edits for Research Counts; the Quick Response, Mitigation Matters, Public Health, and Weather Ready Research Award report series; as well as for special projects and publications. Breeden graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.