Levee, << LEHV ee, >> is a wide wall built along the banks of rivers to keep them from flooding over the land. Levees are made mostly of sandbags and banked-up earth. The name comes from the French word lever, which means to raise. In the United States, the term is used especially to describe walls, or dikes, built along the southern part of the Mississippi River. Irrigation engineers use the term levee to describe a small dike or ridge of earth which confines areas of land that are to be flooded for agricultural purposes.
The first Mississippi River levee was only 3 feet (91 centimeters) high. It was built at New Orleans in 1718 to keep the river from flooding a strip of fertile land. Gradually a few more levees were built. Many years later the seven states that lie south of where the Mississippi meets the Ohio asked the federal government for help to check floods. In 1882, the year of a great Mississippi flood, the government set aside $1,300,000 for the improvement of the river. Part of the money was to be used for making levees. Since then the federal and state governments have spent millions of dollars for the building and repairing of levees.
The earth embankments along the Mississippi River are 15 to 30 feet (4.6 to 9.1 meters) high. They are 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide on top and over 100 feet (30 meters) wide at the base. About 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of levees have been built along the Mississippi River, but they still do not fully control the overflow. Some of these levees are being improved to provide greater flood control. Some authorities object to the building of levees that enclose a river so much that the water is high above the surrounding countryside. This makes floods even more dangerous when they occur. If a levee were to break under these circumstances, a wall of water would rush across the countryside, smashing everything in its way. Experts who oppose high levees believe regulating floods by headwater control is better than trying to regulate them with levees.
