Comprehensive Plan Is Needed For Rapid Levee Repairs
Don Resio, a senior technologist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, Miss., had an “Aha!” moment in 2008 when he conceived of a way to plug roaring levee breaches using fabric tubes partially filled with water. Tested at 1:4 scale on a real breach, the device rolled into place with the water current and sealed the gap in 12 seconds.
Resio believes the principals are completely scalable, and the only thing needed to plug larger breaches, like the typical 40-ft to 60-ft levee gaps in a Mississippi flood, is a larger fabric sack .