What challenges does southern Louisiana face with flooding?
When you ask folks like Heath Jones at the Army Corps of Engineers about the story of Wendell's levy, it's clear they can't exactly sanction what he did.
How do you think about that kind of trade-off that he made by going rogue in this way?
You know you can't ask me that question, right? I'm not sure what the exact motivation for Wendell to do the things, but I got to imagine funding was of the biggest driving factor about why he did the things he did. Yeah. Because our standards are not cheap. And so with limited resources that Wendell had at his disposal, I think he went and did what he thought was right.
And in turn, we had to do what the law requires us to do. And we're not going to be on the hook for a system that was modified that was not done to our standards. At the end of the day, we just got to remember, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people that live behind these risk reduction systems that we build.
The Army Corps' risk analysis, Heath says, just has to keep this much bigger picture in mind. There are hundreds of Wendells working in their system. And the best way to fulfill their mandate of protecting lives and property is to make sure they adhere to the best of their ability to the designs the Corps' engineers have determined to be the safest.
Heath says that doesn't mean that Wendell's levee didn't do its job. Unlike several neighboring communities, the structures within Wendell's levee were mostly spared from major flooding during Hurricane Ida, and no lives were lost, which is not a bad outcome. And Heath says there's a good chance this levee will get back into the Army Corps' system.
We would absolutely welcome South LaFouse Levee District back into the program if they do the work that was originally required to get those permits and make sure that they're up to our standards. Okay, so Wendell's Levee has not been permanently excommunicated from the Army Corps of Engineers system. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Wendell's Levee District and the Army Corps may have been at odds about how exactly to build the levee higher, but they're still fighting a common enemy. And no one from either side has lost sight of that.
As for Wendell Kural himself, he is retired now, though he still visits the levee from time to time. He still proselytizes the need to build higher, still believes that elevation is the salvation to inundation.
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