Windell Curole spent decades working to protect his community in southern Louisiana from the destructive flooding caused by hurricanes. His local office in South Lafourche partnered with the federal government's Army Corps of Engineers to build a massive ring of earthen mounds – also known as levees – to keep the floodwaters at bay.But after Hurricane Katrina called into question the integrity of those levees, Windell decided to take a gamble that put him at odds with his partners in the Army Corps. He decided that the best thing he could do to protect his community was to go rogue and build his levees as tall as possible as quickly as possible, without federal permission.On today's show, what the story of Windell's levee can teach us about how the federal government calculates and manages the risk of natural disasters, and how those calculations can look a lot different to the people staring straight into the eye of the storm.This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Mary Childs. It was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Valentine Rodriguez Sanchez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
What challenges does southern Louisiana face with flooding?
When you ask folks like Heath Jones at the Army Corps of Engineers about the story of Wendell's levy, it's clear they can't exactly sanction what he did.
How do you think about that kind of trade-off that he made by going rogue in this way?
You know you can't ask me that question, right? I'm not sure what the exact motivation for Wendell to do the things, but I got to imagine funding was of the biggest driving factor about why he did the things he did. Yeah. Because our standards are not cheap. And so with limited resources that Wendell had at his disposal, I think he went and did what he thought was right.
And in turn, we had to do what the law requires us to do. And we're not going to be on the hook for a system that was modified that was not done to our standards. At the end of the day, we just got to remember, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people that live behind these risk reduction systems that we build.
The Army Corps' risk analysis, Heath says, just has to keep this much bigger picture in mind. There are hundreds of Wendells working in their system. And the best way to fulfill their mandate of protecting lives and property is to make sure they adhere to the best of their ability to the designs the Corps' engineers have determined to be the safest.
Heath says that doesn't mean that Wendell's levee didn't do its job. Unlike several neighboring communities, the structures within Wendell's levee were mostly spared from major flooding during Hurricane Ida, and no lives were lost, which is not a bad outcome. And Heath says there's a good chance this levee will get back into the Army Corps' system.
We would absolutely welcome South LaFouse Levee District back into the program if they do the work that was originally required to get those permits and make sure that they're up to our standards.
Okay, so Wendell's Levee has not been permanently excommunicated from the Army Corps of Engineers system. Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Wendell's Levee District and the Army Corps may have been at odds about how exactly to build the levee higher, but they're still fighting a common enemy. And no one from either side has lost sight of that.
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