Levee – is it dry? Is it going to break? Perhaps you’ve heard them mentioned in 1970s songs or on the news. We’ve heard the term, but what is a levee? Where are they? What do they do?

Well – a levee is a human-made barrier designed to reduce the frequency of flooding to a portion of a floodplain. In fact, there are more than 6,811 total levee systems covering 24,000 miles throughout the United States with a property value of $2 trillion 23 million people behind them. The National Levee Database has all this information – and more!

The National Levee Database is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), designed to contain information on all known levees in the United States. Along with the National Inventory of Dams a combined Dam and Levee safety data management team with presence in Kansas City, Huntington, West Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida manages the website and application infrastructure.

“It’s a public-facing levee database warehouse for everybody to use,” said Brian Vanbockern, National Levee Database program manager. “It’s intended to be a resource for levee infrastructure information for the nation. Currently we have almost 7,000 levees [in the National Levee Database], of which 1,600 levees are federal USACE projects, so the vast majority of the data base is non-federal projects. It’s managed by USACE based on congressional authorizations to inventory levee information for the nation.”

Levees were a big topic of conversation in 2005 as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, causing great concern to the American public. With the help of the USACE, Congress heard their concerns and provided funding for an inventory and assessment of federal levee systems. The National Levee Safety Act of 2007 formalized the National Levee Database and expanded it to every levee in the country.

The National Levee Database allows the public to search for specific data about levees and serves as a national resource for flooding awareness and preparation, providing them with a great deal of information. Aside from USACE, regular users of this site include federal, Tribal, state and local elected officials, emergency management, concerned homeowners, architects and the media are just a sample.

“A lot of people live behind these levees, 23 million, so tracking this information, the quality and the health of the levees is a life-saving issue,” Vanbockern said. “A significant amount of people, infrastructure, cropland and a whole host of other things [are contained behind it]. Coming out of the Katrina disaster of 2005 tracking more levee information and getting that information to the people that need it.”

The National Levee Database provides important levee information which is necessary if you’re located behind one. The data on the site also provides the length, height, age, what’s behind it – by just entering your address.
According to Vanbockern, it was used extensively during the flood of 2019. Levees from Omaha, Nebraska to St. Louis, were overtopped and information about these levees was used in the emergency response. The site gets increased traffic in any major flood event, so the American public are very interested in what’s going on. Since then, the information on the website has received an extensive update.

“The website was updated in February 2024 [after] we spent the year [2023] doing public outreach through the National Levee Safety Program from USACE headquarters,” Vanbockern explained. “I briefed the National Levee Database multiple times through public venues, webinars and conferences, asking folks what they wanted to see. It continues to evolve, based on feedback.”

The added education pages for new users, such as graphics, description and other extra resources continue to provide the best information to the American public as possible. They can even provide updates, which is especially important as flood insurance rates are impacted with this information.

“It’s a one stop shop for everything levees that anyone can use and a true public resource,” Vanbockern concluded. “The flood risk would not be properly portrayed, nationally, if this wasn’t available – with floods becoming more impactful to the public, especially with more infrastructure at risk, it’s incumbent upon us to know where this resource is at, the public understands their flood risk and know that your property might be subject to water inundation. The National Levee Database provides a good resource to inform you on some of your potential flood risk and where levees are in respect to your property or other concerns.”

Next time the classic rock station is on, or you’re watching the news and you hear the word “levee” and are curious, there is a very extensive place to learn about them. You never know – you may live behind one and never knew it. For more information, visit https://nld.sec.usace.army.mil/.