146 U.S. levees may fail in flood

WASHINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers has identified 146 levees nationwide that it says pose an unacceptable risk of failing in a major flood.
The deficiencies, mostly due to poor maintenance, are forcing communities from Connecticut to California to invest millions of dollars in repairs. If the levees aren't fixed, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could determine that they are no longer adequate flood controls. If that happens, property owners behind the levees would have to buy flood insurance costing hundreds of dollars a year or more.

The substandard levees are being identified under a corps inspection program that has grown more aggressive since Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees across the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Thousands of residents who lost property did not have flood insurance because those levees were considered adequate; later reviews found many were not well maintained.

"The corps and FEMA are saying, 'We've been lax as a nation in our operation and maintenance of these levees, and it's time to tighten up,' " says Larry Larson, director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, an organization for officials who run flood-control systems. "You're talking about risking a lot of lives if one of these fails."

After Katrina, Congress directed the corps and FEMA, which administers federal flood insurance, to identify at-risk levees. The corps inspects about 2,000 levees nationwide, mostly larger ones. The corps provided USA TODAY only with a list of how many faulty levees have been found in each state.

Spokesman Pete Pierce says the corps does not want to release the list of the 146 places where levees have been identified as inadequate until all levees are inspected and all communities with faulty levees are notified. USA TODAY has filed a request for that list under the Freedom of Information Act.

Thousands of levees are spread across every state. They range from miles-long levees protecting major cities to small berms shielding crops. Many were built by the corps and turned over to local authorities, which are responsible for maintaining them.

Local officials fear that some cities cannot afford upgrades. Hartford, Conn., spent $5 million last year to meet the corps' demands for repairs. Otherwise, thousands of properties worth almost $2 billion would have needed flood insurance, City Engineer John McGrane says. "It's a tremendous burden," he says.

The corps is allowing a one-time, one-year grace period to do the work, says Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the corps' director of civil works. "We want communities to clearly understand the risks of not maintaining these levees and take responsibility," he says.

Angola cholera cases rise sharply after deadly floods

LUANDA, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Cholera cases have surged to "alarming" levels in Angola after deadly floods left thousands of people without clean drinking water and access to sewage facilities, aid workers said on Monday.

An average of 90 cases of the potentially fatal intestinal infection are being reported each day in the province of Luanda, which includes the capital, compared to an average of 15 to 20 cases before heavy rains triggered floods last week.

"There has been a five-fold increase in the number of cases in relation to one week ago, which is a lot. Yes, it's quite alarming," said Mark van Boekel, head of Medicins Sans Frontieres Holland in Angola.

There have been a handful of deaths, but the authorities cannot say whether these are directly related to the recent flooding.

But with parts of Luanda, including its slums, submerged in fetid water and more rain forecast, aid workers say the outbreak may worsen in the coming weeks and the death toll could eclipse that of the floods, which have killed at least 90 people.

Cholera is spread through feces-contaminated water and food and usually marked by vomiting and acute diarrhoea. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to the disease, often dying from severe dehydration within 24 hours after infection.

An oil-rich nation that is emerging from a 27-year civil war that shattered bridges, roads and drainage systems, Angola has faced a number of cholera outbreaks in recent years. More than 1,800 people died last year in its worst outbreak in a decade.

Millions of Angolans lack access to health care, including the antibiotics and rehydration salts that easily treat cholera, and the country routinely struggles to get basic medical supplies to areas cut off by poor or non-existent roads.

One-quarter of all children in the former Portuguese colony, sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria, do not survive to their fifth birthday.

With the end of the civil war in 2002 and the beginning of an oil-financed reconstruction boom, Angola's leaders have said they are committed to improving basic health care and developing other social programmes.

But the government has been criticised for reacting slowly to the cholera epidemic and the health sector as a whole.

"They are making billions in oil revenues, but their general priorities do not seem to include health," one foreign aid worker told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

But others credit the government in Luanda for making progress, albeit slowly, in the health sector and learning from its most recent brush with cholera. Van Boekel noted that Angola seemed to be better equipped now than it was last year.

"There is a better preparedness among the population, the international agencies and authorities," he said.

"(But) in poor neighbourhoods there isn't always potable water to drink and the sanitary conditions are bad. So the preparedness doesn't change the cause, it only improves the response," he added.

Fears of a jump in cholera cases are not confined to Angola.

Authorities in Mozambique and Zambia have said they are concerned about outbreaks of the disease after floods prompted thousands to flee to crowded emergency camps and unsheltered higher ground in the two southern African nations.