The Army Corps of Engineers has instituted a policy that calls for the cutting down of any tree withing 15 feet of a levee, this according to an Associated Press article appearing on Newsvine.com. As you can imagine, there is some debate as to merits of such a program. From the article: The corps has "this body of decades of experience that says you shouldn't have trees on your levees," said Eric Halpin, the agency's special assistant for dam and levee safety. And then this: Experts outside the corps say a tree has never caused a U.S. levee failure."If trees are a problem, why aren't we having problems with them?" said George Sills, who formerly worked for the corps' Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss. "There's never been a documented problem with a tree."
The article goes on to reference the case of The Breston Plantation in Colombia, Louisiana on the Ouachita River levee, which is surrounded by sycamores, live oaks, elms, pines, cedars, magnolias and crepe myrtles. Find out what happened here.
photo by AP Photo/ Kita Wright
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