LPV 111 East Back Levee Improvement

Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity, New Orleans, Louisiana (US)

The subsidiary U.S. company of Trevi Group TREVIICOS has been working in New Orleans to complete the largest deep soil mixing project in the U.S. On August 29th 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast with dramatic and, in some way, irreversible consequences for the city of New Orleans (800,000 people evacuated or displaced, 1,482 dead and over 91 billion dollars of damage). Unlike what we have been told by the media, such devastation was not caused by nature alone (although Katrina stills remains one of the five most powerful hurricanes ever recorded in the USA), but rather by the failure of the system of dams, canals and embankments built over decades to protect the area of New Orleans. Due to its exceptional intensity, the structures broke in up to fifty-three places, and 80% of the metropolitan area was flooded.

After the first emergency interventions, the Army Corps of Engineers of the New Orleans District, through the New Orleans Hurricane Protection Office, designed a special plan entailing a number of interventions: the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System. The plan is intended to improve the city protection and defence system, as well as harmonise and increase the effectiveness of the infrastructure undergoing maintenance, repair or reconstruction. In the overall works plan, especially important is the LPV 111 New Orleans East Back Levee. Reach LPV 111 is a levee extending approximately 8.5 km (5.3 miles) between the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the CSX Railroad Crossing, parallel to a marshy area of Lake Borgne, beyond which you get into the open water of the Gulf of Mexico. LPV 111 was seriously damaged by Hurricane Katrina and broke in many places.