St.
Q ..
Did any other cities have a similar kind of problem? I mean of that dimension, that
Well, I don't know--every city has a problem with stormwater I know. But I know that
A
the Corps got involved in a lot of interior drainage facilities. In St. Louis, they have a
major levee around St. Louis, the Corps does, and it's a huge one to take care of a really
big flood. So they have to have facilities to get rid of the water that runs into the interior
-- I mean from the rain that accumulates over the city.
If the Mississippi River and the Missouri River stay up for long periods of time, it can't
drain interior water out so they have facilities to get rid of it. Even if the river is down,
they still have to have conveyance to get it through the line of protection.
So the Corps got involved in building a lot of interior drainage facilities. Increasing the
size of the conduits underneath the levee with gates on them and pumping plants and all
this kind of stuff. When I first came into Washington back in
it wasn't too long after
that a lot of these reports would come in from St. Louis on their interior drainage and
there was a lot of money involved in big pumps. A lot of complicated designs, and how
they were going to handle the water. Because the water was coming down, ponding at the
levee where all the big industry was. Any water that stayed in there was going to cause
a lot of damage. So they had to get rid of it.
Q ..
Now that was on both the east and the west sides of the river--both in east St. Louis and
in St. Louis itself.
A
That was one of the bigger projects that I got involved in as far as actual interior design
of projects. Even though you had a big levee there, it was already there, and they still had
a lot of work to take care of the interior flooding.
New Orleans
Q ..
Did New Orleans have problems something similar to that?
A
Oh, New Orleans still has that problem. They never have solved their problem. But one
thing--the flood insurance program has put them in a bad [situation]--because a lot of this
interior drainage, the interior storm collection and all that stuff, is really the responsibility