About Levees.org
An investigative public education nonprofit founded in 2005 by Sandy Rosenthal and her then-15yo son Stanford.
Our mission
To provide education on why the levees broke in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
The catastrophic flooding was due to the failure of federal levees and floodwalls which — had they been designed and built properly — would have held up against storm surge. With 62% of the American people living in counties protected by levees, it’s important that Americans living outside the New Orleans region understand what really happened in south Louisiana in 2005.
How it began
On Halloween Day 2005, nine weeks after the levee failures, Sandy Rosenthal realized she had to do something about the myths taking root — mainly, the myth that the residents of greater New Orleans understood the risk they faced and thus were foolish to live there. She applied her skills, and her 15-year-old son Stanford applied his. The Levees.org website went live on December 3, 2005.
At Levees.org’s kickoff rally on January 21, 2006, at the Army Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District headquarters, Rosenthal said:
Our mission is education. We are a non-partisan, non-sectarian grassroots group. Only the passion of citizens powers us. Our mission is to send America the facts about the metro New Orleans flood and we will not stop until this information becomes mainstream.
Since then, Levees.org has grown to more than 25,000 supporters, with chapters in several states. It has installed historic plaques at three breach sites, built the Levee Exhibit Hall & Rain Garden and the Flooded House Museum, won a change to the Associated Press style guide, helped pass federal and state legislation, and collaborated on the 2015 Water Policy paper that corrected the record on the drainage canal failures. Levees.org is a non-partisan nonprofit funded entirely by supporter donations, with no corporate sponsors.
Why this site
Since December 2005, Levees.org has published more than 800 posts, mostly in a blog format. That record is invaluable, but it is organized by date, not by idea. learn.levees.org reorganizes it into lessons a newcomer can read in order, with links back to the original posts and the primary sources behind them.
Almost all of the text here comes from Levees.org, especially the Levee Exhibit text reviewed by Ivor van Heerden, former deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center; Dr. Stephen Nelson of Tulane University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences; and H.J. Bosworth Jr., P.E., Levees.org’s lead researcher. Connecting text was written to match. Photographs are credited to the photographers who generously shared them with Levees.org.
Get involved
- Join Levees.org. Advocate for safe levees in your community and nationwide. It’s free: 1–2 emails monthly, directly from Sandy. Sign up at Levees.org.
- Read the book. Words Whispered in Water: Why the Levees Broke in Hurricane Katrina by founder Sandy Rosenthal.
- Listen. The Slingshot, the podcast from Levees.org.
- Support Engineering Failures Education. Add your name.
- Donate. All of Levees.org’s expenses are paid for by supporter donations. Donate.
- Contact. Founder Sandy Rosenthal: sandy@levees.org. General information: info@levees.org.
Found an error?
Accuracy is the whole point. If you find a mistake on this site, please email info@levees.org with the page and the correction, and a source if you have one.