The next time there is a levee breach in San Joaquin County, Calif., Ronald Baldwin, the county’s director of emergency operations, would like to have some huge rubber tubes pre-positioned at Interstate underpasses, rail embankments and other strategic locations to contain flooding.
Baldwin was sold on the technology of using large, air- and water-filled PVC-coated, polyester-fabric tubes for flood control after seeing them in action on Nov. 9 at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Hydraulic Engineering Research Unit in Stillwater, Okla. The tests and demonstrations were conducted by the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Miss.