Sinking Sections of New Orleans Levee Prompt Repair

The Army Corps of Engineers is spending $1.3 million to raise about 4,000 feet of earthen levee in easternmost New Orleans, La., that has subsided so low it wouldn’t be able to withstand a storm surge caused by a so-called 100-year hurricane.

Corps Senior Project Manager Chris Gilmore tells The Times-Picayune included in the reconstruction is a 1,500-foot-long section on either side of U.S. 11 on the edge of the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and smaller areas between U.S. 11 and Interstate 10, and one small area just north of U.S. 90 in the same area.

Gilmore says the biggest area of sinking occurred where rapidly subsiding soils were expected because they lie on top of an ancient slough, or depression, that was once a stream or river bed.