Never Safe From Water
By Doug Edelman

Instrument failure is being blamed as the cause of the bursting of a reservoir wall in southeastern Missouri, sending a billion gallons of water down a mountain by Lesterville taking homes and cars with it. The 20 foot wall of water also flooded Johnson's Shut-ins; a popular park which, in warmer weather, is usually found brimming with campers.

Union Electric, now known as Ameren UE, erected the Taum Sauk plant in 1963. The 55 acre reservoir was built to hold 1.5 billion gallons to a depth of 90 feet. Water ran from this reservoir thru turbines to a lower reservoir to generate power during peak demand times, and was pumped back into the upper reservoir during times of slack demand.

Apparently, the instruments failed to detect that the upper reservoir level was high. Instead they indicated low levels so water continued to be pumped into the upper reservoir. Eventually the level got high enough that the sheer weight of the excess water burst the side of the reservoir, sending a billion gallons of stored water coursing down the mountain; emptying the reservoir in just 12 minutes.

Three children were seriously injured. Fortunately there were no fatalities and all area residents have been accounted for.

In the same space of time, ironically, national news was made with the announcement that the New Orleans levees were going to be rebuilt "bigger and better", now to a height of 17 feet in some places. And the talk of the "ability to withstand a Category 5 storm" is again in the news.

What wasn't learned from Katrina should now be impressed upon us by Lesterville. Water is HEAVY. If water rises up the sides of a levee wall… one must consider the size of the impoundment! If a few extra feet of depth in a mere 55 acre reservoir in Lesterville, Missouri has enough added weight to collapse a 600 foot wide section of the retaining wall… how much additional pressure would raising the massive Lake Pontchartrain by a foot or 2 exert on these levees?

One must remember, and I must emphasize, that the difference between a Category 1 hurricane and a Category 5 hurricane is WINDSPEED and Barometric Pressure… NOT WATER! A large, slow moving Category 2 storm is going to drop more rain on a city in its path than a Category 4 storm moving rapidly along its track. The WINDS of Katrina didn't blow down the levees. It was the additional weight of all that extra WATER that breached them.

New Orleans remains a bowl below the resting levels of the Missisippi, the Gulf, and Lake Pontchartrain. If that level rises enough due to stormwater, no levee man can build will keep it from flooding again. Building a higher wall just means more water to drain when it breaches. Because of the inherent nature of the geography, there can be no real security for New Orleans. Only the luck that keeps New Orleans out of the path of another killer storm.

Doug Edelman is a conservative political commentator and a contributing editor for The Conservative Voice, and his work is also seen on News By Us, The American Daily, The Post Chronicle, Capitol Hill Coffee House etc. None of these pays him, so for the support of his family, he is also an IT Consultant/Contractor and owner of a Computer Services Business. He has taught PC Maintenance & Repair and Networking at his local Community College, and maintains a blog at http://edeldoug.blogs.com/.

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