Ivor Van Heerden – The Scientist

More at www.levees.org Professor Ivor Van Heerden helped create the storm surge model that warned of New Orleans vulnerability to levee failure. His work and his efforts to publicize this science was responsible for the saving of many thousands of lives. After the levee system failure – until the BP well disaster, the biggest engineering failure in US history – Van Heerden pointed out that the levees failed because of poor design, constructions and maintenance. For this, he was threatened by LSU administrators who said they did not want to lose US Army Corps of Engineer funding. He was in fact fired without stated reason or cause and LSU continues to get grants from the US Army Corps of Engineers which continues to act without meaningful oversight putting thousands of lives and billions of dollars of property at risk.

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