Texas City: the next New Orleans?

There's been no peace of mind for our friends in Texas City lately: First they had to deal with exploding apartments, then Jesse Jackson came back, and now there's word that the city's levee system might not stand up to a powerful hurricane, which could affect nearly 5 percent of the nation's oil refining capacity and thousands of homes. And we thought the Jesse Jackson thing was bad!

The Chronicle looked at the Texas City levees, which were built after Hurricane Carla hit in 1961, and found that they may have some of the same problems as the levees that failed in New Orleans: subsidence, substandard construction and uneven transitions between earthen and concrete sections. The levee protects several major refineries and chemical plants; if it were to break during a severe hurricane, several feet of water could flood sections of Texas City, shutting down industry for months. One of the big potential problems is that the section of the levee that would take the brunt of the force from a big storm — a 7,500-foot stretch fronting on Galveston Bay — is made of material dredged from the bottom of the bay. That's the same basic construction used in some of the levees that broke and caused heavy flooding in eastern New Orleans after Katrina. There are also potential issues with the construction of concrete sections of the Texas City levee, which could fail under pressure from waves and rising water, and the fact that some concrete sections of the levee are taller than the adjacent earthen sections, which could increase erosion. Oh, and a survey last year found that a 1,000-foot section of the Texas City levee has sunk as much as three feet because of subsidence.

Texas City and Galveston County engineers and local officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said they think Texas City's levees would hold. Texas City emergency management and homeland security director Bruce Clawson said comparing the city with New Orleans is pointless because New Orleans is below sea level and the older parts of Texas City are a dizzying 3 to 8 feet above sea level. Army Corps Galveston District commander Col. Steve Haustein added that the Port Arthur levee, similar in construction to Texas City's, performed well during Hurricane Rita last year. Even so, he said he's willing to conduct more inspections if the corps and Congress authorize them.