Why would building a levee from locally-available material make it susceptible to failure?
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER: The floodplain materials on which levees are built are often composed of old permeable sand and gravel channels surrounded by less permeable muds. The floodplain muds beyond the current channel are sediments that were left behind by the river where it spilled over a natural levee to flow on the floodplain. A river migrates across all parts of that floodplain over a period of hundreds or thousands of years. Under a mud-capped floodplain, the broad layers of sand and gravel deposited in former river channels interweave one another. These permeable layers provide avenues for transfer of high water in a river channel to lower areas behind levees on a floodplain. If a flood is prolonged, seepage beneath the levee can transmit enough water to flood surrounding areas behind the levee.?
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