DC -- Natl Mall area -- 17th Street Levee (Floodwall):
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Description of Subject Matter: Seen This Wall By The Washington Monument? That’s the Potomac Park Levee
Elliot Carter
These stone walls by the Washington Monument aren’t a part of any memorial or historic structure. They’re a temporary dam that can span 17th street and hold back a 100-year flood. The 17th street dam is the newest part of the 80-year-old Potomac Park levee.
Washington's Federal Triangle neighborhood is uniquely vulnerable to flooding. First – the area is built on low lying land; if the river crests East Potomac Park it would quickly rush downhill and inundate the cross streets off Constitution Avenue. The second threat comes from rain runoff - Federal Triangle is the lowest point in a drainage basin stretching from the ballpark to Fort Totten.
The stakes are even higher because of what’s in those Federal Triangle buildings. Flood damage to the National Archives, EPA, IRS and Department of Justice could be devastating.
The original Potomac Park Levee was a temporary structure built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during a flood in 1936 to keep rising waters from reaching downtown. That weather event spurred Congress to authorize the construction of a larger earthen barrier and make the levee permanent. The Army Corps of Engineers completed the project in 1939. Most people walking along the sloping footpaths around the tidal basin don't realize that they're standing on manmade berms that were carefully laid out to prevent a watery disaster.
17th Street was the only gap in the levee - a deliberate but foolish engineering decision. Building in a gap offered two advantages. First it provided a pleasant even grade for automobile drivers traveling North-South. In the event of flood conditions, the plan called for a hastily built sandbag wall to plug the gap.
The 17th Street gap offered a second benefit of centralizing the risk of a flood, so during a storm engineers could focus their efforts on a single preplanned fail-safe, rather than fighting the waters at a thousand diffe ...More...
Atlas Obscura Description: Potomac Park Flood Levee
This mysterious structure by the Washington Monument is a flood barrier designed to protect the White House against rising waters.
These stone walls by the Washington Monument aren’t a part of any memorial or historic structure. They’re part of a temporary dam that can span 17th Street and hold back a 100-year flood. The dam is the newest part of the 80-year-old Potomac Park levee.
Washington’s Federal Triangle neighborhood is uniquely vulnerable to flooding. First, the area is built on low lying land; if the river crests East Potomac Park it would quickly rush downhill and inundate the cross streets off Constitution Avenue. The second threat comes from rain runoff; Federal Triangle is the lowest point in a drainage basin stretching from the ballpark to Fort Totten.
The stakes are even higher because of what’s in those Federal Triangle buildings. Flood damage to the National Archives, EPA, IRS and Department of Justice could be devastating.
The original Potomac Park Levee was a temporary structure built during a flood in 1936 to keep rising waters from reaching downtown. That weather event spurred Congress to authorize the construction of a larger earthen barrier and make the levee permanent. The Army Corps of Engineers completed the project in 1939. Most people walking along the sloping footpaths around the tidal basin don’t realize that they’re standing on manmade berms that were carefully laid out to prevent a watery disaster.
17th Street was the only gap in the levee—a deliberate but foolish engineering decision. The gap provided a pleasant even grade for automobile drivers traveling north to south, and it centralized the risk of a flood, so during a storm engineers could focus their efforts on a single preplanned fail-safe rather than fighting the waters at a thousand different locations along the levee.
In the event of flood conditions, the plan called for a hastily built sandbag wall to plug the gap. Unfortunately, in the ca ...More...
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2016_DC_Mall_Floodwall: DC -- Natl Mall area -- 17th Street Levee (Floodwall) (9 photos from 2016)
2018 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Trips this year:
Civil War Trust conferences in Greenville, NC, Newport News, VA, and my farewell event with them in Chicago, IL (via sites in Louisville, KY, St. Louis, MO, and Toledo, OH),
three trips to New York City (including New York Comic-Con), and
my 13th consecutive trip to San Diego Comic-Con (including sites in Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Los Angeles).
Number of photos taken this year: about 535,000.
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