Innovative dam and levee design construction for sustainable water management is the theme of the United States Society of Dams 32nd annual meeting and conference, which will be held in New Orleans April 23-27.
USSD is planning to “capitalize on the watershed event of Hurricane Katrina” and the subsequent levee failures in 2005, as well as riverine levee failures along the Mississippi, Red and Missouri rivers in the 2011 historic flood season, to increase emphasis on levees at this year’s conference, says Paul Booth, associate vice president and dam safety manager for ARCADIS-US. Booth is also on the USSD Conference planning committee and an instrumentation committee. "As a nation, our efforts have been much less concentrated on levees than dams, in many ways, because of the part-time role levees play." Whereas dams hold water full-time, levees are typically only called to action when flooding occurs, Booth says.