Engineering Ethical Issues of the Katrina Hurricane Response and the TVAs Kingston Ash Spill - Coursework Example

Engineering Ethical Issues in respect of the Katrina Hurricane Response and the TVA’s Kingston Ash Spill Ethical issues usually involve differing perceptions of responsibility and duty with respect to organizations, society, supervisors, governments, moral obligations, and collective and individual rights (Schwester 348). Both professional and public service ethics in the technical –rational traditions are governed by deontological and theological ethics. These ethics focus on the person’s decision-making process as the member of a profession and within the modern organization. In the public domain, deontological ethics are intended to safeguard the organization’s integrity by assisting individuals conform to the professional norms, avoid misdeeds and mistakes (such as nepotism and corruption) that go against public trust. Deontological ethics also ensure that the public officials within the constitutional republic are accountable to people (Adams and Balfour 4). A good example is the failure of the levees after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans (Schwester 348). There are people who argue that the city of New Orleans should not have been located in such vulnerable environment. New Orleans is located below-sea level which is a factor that could have contributed to the vulnerability of New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. The important factor is perhaps the New Orleans system of floodwalls and levees, which were built in the 1920s and in the 1930s. The Corps of Engineers and the levee districts did not maintain the levees and the floodwalls adequately. Furthermore, the soil structure initial assessment indicates that the system was built on substandard soil. This means that the levees could be overtopped by Category 3 storm. Multiple breaches in a number of waterways and from Lake Pontchartrain offered substantial evidence of inadequate risk assessment and failure to sufficiently protect the waterways (Adams and Balfour 8). The engineering ethical issues in regard to the Hurricane Katrina have accumulated since the construction of the floodwalls and levees during the 1920s and 1930s. Due to the economic significance of New Orleans, Morgan City, and the Baton Rouge, a system of levees was constructed in the past years to keep the river in its current bed and also to manage, or control frequent flooding. To make matters worse, flooding can result due to the Mississippi River large spring flows, and from storms blowing from the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, the operators and designers of a New Orleans flood control system are faced with sophisticated design conditions (Christian 6). In the early 20th century, pumping stations were constructed along the ridge to take out floodwaters from the river basin. As the city stretched north away from the ridge, the newly inhabited areas north of the ridge were exposed to flooding from the nearby lake. Rather than constructing additional pumping capacity at the shores of the lake, the existing pumping stations were connected to drainage canals that emptied into the lake. The city also stretched towards the east (particularly in Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East regions). All these areas towards the east lie below the sea level and thus, they must be protected or sheltered by a system of levees (Christian 7). Southern Louisiana was constructed out of sediments transported from Mississippi River interior. The crystalline bedrock is covered by tens of thousands of feet of soft sediments from the river. There is a basic pattern of subsidence sophisticated by additional settlement such that a levee can placed on the sediments. Thus, the individual structures and the city settle by varying amounts, for instance, the tops of the levees can be actually low than the water levels they are required to defend against. Additionally, because of the basic subsidence, it is not easy to establish reliable benchmarks that can be used to assess the location of the levees (Christian 7). The flooding in New Orleans occurred due to three phenomena and two of these phenomena are important in this context. The phenomena include overtopping of the levees and sections of the canals or levees failing even before the level of the water reached the overtopping level. Some of the levees were overtopped because they were constructed withstand small magnitude of storms than the Hurricane Katrina. The levees were below their design elevations and the impact of the design storm was not sufficiently estimated. The levees that failed to work even before the overtopping could not adequately hold water levels for which they were constructed. All the mentioned causes of flooding in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina suggest major deficiencies in the methods for the construction and design of the levee system in New Orleans (Christian 8). In a nutshell, the engineering of the levee systems was not sufficient. In other words, professional ethics were applied when constructing the levee systems. Teleological and deontological ethics were not followed during the construction and response to Hurricane Katrina over the years. Some of levels systems constructed could not even hold water levels for which they were constructed for. This indicates violation of engineering professional ethics. Due to ignorance of the engineering ethical issues, the problems or issues accumulated over the years leading to the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina a few years ago. The TVA’s Kingston ash spill incident also indicates an event that occurred due to the accumulation of engineering ethical issues. However, in this case, there were no casualties as in the Hurricane Katrina. The TVA’s Kingston ash spill also expresses a violation of both professional and public service ethics. After a blowout of the massive wall above the ground of the coal ash landfill in 2003 at the TVA’s Kingston power plant, the engineers were under pressure to look for a viable and economical solution to the problem. Vital to note is that the blowout was not huge. This was an indication that something was wrong within the 98-acre heap of sludge. Water was getting into the layers of ash and building pressure points on the dike or the dam supporting the structure. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) decided to stabilize the Kingston’s ash landfill through its strategy of maximizing on-site strategy and avoiding options that were costly. However, the decision to stabilize the ash landfill would have dire implications on TVA’s other elevated waste dumps (Paine 1). The review of the Tennessean state records and of the TVA documents showed that top officials rejected the initial solutions that were regarded as global fixes because they were simply expensive (the option that was very expensive was $25 million). Finally, TVA decided to install a number of trenches and other drainage methods in order to ease the water pressure and offer more stability to the walls. However, the walls could not hold the water pressure and a dark mass of coal ash sludge rolled for more than 300 acres destroying everything on its way. Investigations are still underway to investigate what cause the collapse of the ash mountain. According to TVA, the collapse of the wall was probably due to freezes and heavy rains (Paine 1). An engineer who reviewed the 2008 TVA’s Annual Ash Pond Dike Stability Inspection report questioned the evaluation done by TVA. The stability report had information about erosion, seeps, and other significant issues. However, the report lacked back-up information that the dike or the dam was actually stable. A safety consultant indicated that the dike failed due to slope instability. The report lacked information concerning the pressure within the landfill in relation to the material cohesiveness and the seepages. Trouble with the TVA’s coal-burning plants began many years ago. The Kingston Ash facility is a wet version and it has been built very high. Before catastrophic break in 2008, the stashed ash was between 60 and 65 feet above the Swan Pond Road. The walls of the landfill were made of heavy mass of ash that fall to the the plant’s burner’s bottom. The wet fly ash was deposited within the walls after being removed from settling ponds (Paine 1). In 2003, the landfill was shut because of a blowout and an emergency dredge cell was constructed to next to the landfill as the investigations took place. The investigations blamed excessive seepage and piping as the cause of the blowout. Recommendations to the problem included conversion to a dry ash collection system, a new dredge cell, a vibrating beam cutoff wall, and a liner on the entire landfill (these were the alternatives presented to TVA). None of the alternatives was adopted by TVA because some of them were too costly. Instead, the trench drain option (not mentioned in the 2003 alternatives to the problem) was adopted. However, the wall ruptured in 2006, a failure followed the same year, another rupture occurred, and ash and water was lost from the nearby section of the wall. The blowout was small according to TVA (Paine 1). From this case, it is apparent professional and public service ethics were not followed in dealing with the issues facing the TVA’s Kingston ash landfill. Instead, the options chosen were cheaper and unreliable, and this led to the massive blowout of the ash landfill. Works Cited Adams, Guy, B. & Balfour Danny L. leadership, administrative evil and the ethics of incompetence: lessons from Katrina and Iraq. University of Delaware. Newark, Delaware. 31 May – 2 June 2007. Workshop. Christian, John, T. “Lessons from Hurricane Katrina.” The Bridge Linking Engineering and Society 2007: 6-11. Print. Paine, Anne. “TVA Rejected Costly Fixes.” Science & Environmental Health Network. 4 Jan. 2009. Web. 12 March 2012. Schwester, Richard. Handbook of Critical Incident Analysis. New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2011. Print. Read More