Resources on Levees
Our fall 2024 issue of the Water Map focuses on the topic of levees -- what they make possible, their drawbacks, and what it might take to reimagine our relationship to flood protection and water. If you’re interested in diving deeper into some of these topics, here are some of the readings and resources that informed our work on this issue.
National Levee Database, US Army Corps of Engineers: “The National Levee Database captures all known levees in the U.S.” Locate and learn about levees where you live, including information on what is protected by each levee (e.g., how many buildings, how many people, estimated property value). There are also educational resources for learning about how levees function and how they fail.
Evolution of the Levee System Along the Lower Mississippi River Valley, J. David Rogers: This slide show traces the history of levee development along the Mississippi River Valley from the 18th century into the 21st century, and is abundantly illustrated with maps, photos, and diagrams.
Levee Construction, 1890s to 1940s, US Army Corps of Engineers – New Orleans District: This Flickr album is an astounding collection of images capturing different aspects of levees, levee construction, and riverfront activity in New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish, and other parts of southeast Louisiana – we drew the historical images featured in the fall issue of the Water Map from this album. Prison gangs, wheelbarrows, mules, dragline excavators, willow mats, and all kinds of other aspects of levee construction and maintenance are visible in these photographs.
Levees, Slavery, and Maintenance, by John Dean Davis: “Antebellum planters could pay their levee tax in labor, forcing their enslaved laborers to work on their levees and extinguishing their tax burden with the sweat of their slaves.” Learn about the construction of levees throughout the Mississippi River Valley, and the role of slavery in the development of levee infrastructure in the Antebellum South, as well as shifts in levee construction construction and maintenance during Reconstruction and beyond.
If you’re interested in diving REALLY deep into modern levee construction and maintenance, here are a few Army Corps links that might be of interest:
- Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System Design Guidelines
- Levee Owner’s Manual for Federal Non-Federal Flood Control Works
- Levee Safety Program
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A Theory on Urban Resilience to Floods—A Basis for Alternative Planning Practices | Fika: A Different Approach to Flood Safety, Liao Kuei-Hsien: “Building urban resilience to floods is essentially a process of adaptation—instead of fighting the river, cities live with periodic floods, allowing them to enter the city to learn from them [...]” To learn more about Liao Kuei-Hsien’s work on urban flooding and ecological resilience, visit the links above. The first is a 2012 paper from Ecology and Society and the second is a video of a 2020 talk, viewable on the Water Leaders Institute YouTube channel.
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Building a Home in the Delta, Monique Verdin: “We are just as much a water people as we are a land people here.” (20:35) Join interdisciplinary storyteller Monique Verdin for a journey through southeast Louisiana and Bvlbancha, the “Place of Many Tongues.” Using maps, photography, collages, and family stories, Monique weaves a story of the Mississippi River Delta that centers Indigenous histories (including mound-building), and connects the formation of the delta to Indigenous settlements to colonization to the activism and possibilities of today. There is also a bonus segment on crawfish. (Visit, also, the Nanih Bvlbancha website for additional resources on mound building.)
Water/Land: New Orleans Soils and Water Tour, Cyndhia Ramatchandirane: To understand land, levees, and flood protection in a delta city, we have to understand the interaction of soils and water. In spring 2021, we visited three spots in the Mississippi River Delta, Bulbancha, New Orleans, to try to understand how water can create and how water can take away, and why mud is so important. Our guide is geoscientist Cyndhia Ramatchandirane.
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