East St. Louis Levees Fail Test

[133724]

The five levees that protect the metropolitan area of East St. Louis, Ill., from the Mississippi River do not meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s standards for flood protection and will be removed from maps that the agency publishes to record flood vulnerability, government officials said yesterday.

The risk of the levees’ failure is low, said Col. Lewis F. Setliff II, commander of the St. Louis District of the Army Corps of Engineers. But their inability to meet the standards means that the flood maps will no longer show their presence. Instead, the area will be judged as if it is in an unprotected flood plain, officials said, and that in turn can have a powerful effect on housing costs, economic development and insurance rates.


....



She said the process of creating the new maps would take “about a year, maybe more,” and noted that people who bought flood insurance in the meantime would be able to lock in lower rates that go with presumed levee protection.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/us/23levees.html

[frogcycle]

1. sounds like a scam to get people to rush out and buy insurance

i bet her brother-in-law is an agent in the area

[tularetom]

2. This is New Orleans all over again

A not very wealthy, heavily minority population living behind ill designed levees that are probably in addition poorly maintained and full of gopher holes.

I believe the insurance companies are trying to wash their hands in advance for the disaster that will probably occur there the next time a flood crest comes down the river. And the feds are jumping backwards through their assholes trying to help out their buddies in the insurance bidness.

The wrong lesson to learn from Katrina.