The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Giant flood wall

Parkersburg community garden with flood wall.
The Parkersburg community garden sits right next to a giant flood wall.

It was built in 1950 with a gate that can be closed in case of really high waters.

According to google it has never needed to be closed.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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"It has never needed to be closed yet".

Global warming isn't over yet. There will probably be a first time. :-/ I hope it's in better repair than (say) the levees and flood walls around New Orleans were in 2005.

Here in the Netherlands we have around 13670 miles of dikes (levees). Upkeep of those costs around $1650 million per year. That's a lot of money but it's nice to be able to sleep at night without having to fear drowning in your own bed!

Comment by Roland_Smith Mon Jul 9 15:28:27 2018
I was thinking the same thing. I doubt if there has been much upkeep since it was constructed....it looks old and I wonder if it can hold without cracking if the water needs to go near the top of the wall? I guess that would depend on the quality of concrete they used.
Comment by mark Tue Jul 10 08:56:42 2018

According to this new story:

"Parkersburg is really one project that is in very good condition," added Andy Cremeans, team leader for the corps' levee safety program. "I don't recall any real concerning issues with the floodwall."

According to the linked story the city is currently not eligable for maintanance program funding because they didn't carry out some inspections.

To me that just sounds plain crazy. In the Netherlands we pay a lot of money for levee maintenance. But you don't hear people grumble about it. Water is a force of nature that is best not trifled with.

Comment by Roland_Smith Tue Jul 10 14:58:28 2018





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