March 7, 2021
Levees with unacceptable ratings are far more common than acceptable. And 73 systems with unacceptable ratings are considered high or very high risk.
The U.S. levee system — once considered the second largest piece of the country's infrastructure "rivaled only by the highway system" — is now nearly a century old and failing inspections far more often than it passes them. Only one in 25 federal levees are rated Acceptable.
Newsy's data analysis of the National Levee Database in the spring of 2020 focused on two things: the status of the overall infrastructure and finding the nation's most vulnerable levees.
In the federal portfolio of levees, the most common inspection rating is Minimally Acceptable (57.1%). It means at least one part of the levee doesn't meet standards, but should survive a flood. Unacceptable ratings (38.7%) — meaning the levee isn't expected to perform as intended in a flood — are far more common than Acceptable ratings (4.2%).