[BoulderCouncilHotline] To See How Levees Increase Flooding, We Built Our Own | ProPublica

[Morzel, Lisa]

https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/levees?reveal=true

To See How Levees Increase Flooding, We Built Our Own

By Al Shaw<https://www.propublica.org/people/al-shaw>, Lisa Song<https://www.propublica.org/people/lisa-song>, Katie Campbell<https://www.propublica.org/people/katie-campbell> and Ranjani Chakraborty<https://www.propublica.org/people/ranjani-chakraborty>, August 6, 2018

Levees — massive earthen or concrete structures that keep rivers confined to their channels — tame the flow of rivers and make life possible for the millions of people who live behind them. But they come with often-unexamined risks, as they can make floods worse for the communities across the river or upstream from them.

This is well-known to scientists and supported by basic physics, but we wanted to see it for ourselves. So, instead of waiting for a huge flood, we built our own.

ProPublica and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting hired engineers at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory<https://www.safl.umn.edu/> at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to build a physical model of four levee scenarios to see how levee height and placement choices can put surrounding communities on the floodplain — the low-lying land near river channels — at greater risk of flooding.


Lisa

Lisa Morzel
Member, Boulder City Council
303-815-6723 c
303-938-8520 h

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