An excerpt from a recent story in National Geographic Magazine:
J. David Rogers, a geological engineer from the University of Missouri-Rolla who investigated the levee failures after Katrina with Bea for the National Science Foundation, concurs with Bea's assessment of the system's weak spots, particularly the eroded levee that is the primary hurricane protection for St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. Both engineers say a more detailed study of the levee soils is necessary to determine just how weak the MRGO levee is, but Rogers says the image of the eroded structure "certainly doesn't give me any confidence that it would survive eight hours of overtopping—what you would need for a Category 3 storm. It might survive an hour. They've obviously got a problem there. The veneer is not thick enough and the core of the levee is cohesiveless material—organic muck and silt."
Read the whole story here.
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