But as a precaution, the Corps of Engineers was building a makeshift berm on Monday to back up the levee in case it failed or was topped by water, officials said.
The two-mile long stretch focuses on building a "bridging berm", a snaking green mound that will rise to 15 feet (4.57m), the once-in-a-hundred-years flood level which Sandy almost reached, and provide a landing point for footbridges across the FDR Drive, the roaring six-lane highway that effectively severs residents of the Lower East Side from the waterfront.
Perhaps most devastating, the Leitners believe the town of Bedford may have inadvertently contributed to the disaster by building an emergency berm on the day of the storm, protecting some houses on a nearby street but directing water toward theirs -- the only house in town that was lost that day.
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's governor and a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, accuses the federal government of blocking his plans to defend against the spill by building a system of sand berms.
Three months after BP capped its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, the state of Louisiana is still building a chain of sand berms off its coast to block and capture oil even as federal officials and many scientists argue that the effort will prove pointless.
The military, with American help, is building a desert wall: a sand berm about ten feet high, backed by a saltwater moat and electronic surveillance equipment, that extends a hundred miles southward from the sea.
To keep them from advancing across the border, the Saudis are building a six-hundred-mile barrier in the desert: berms, walls, forty watch towers, underground movement sensors, surveillance vehicles, and more than thirty so-called military response stations furnished with helipads.
The plan calls for creating 4,250 acres of salt marsh to restore lost wetlands and building a six-acre nesting island for birds, an underwater berm for fish and 118 acres of new oyster reefs.
Build a berm to hold the water in.
"The idea is to build a beach berm roughly 100 to 200 feet wide, and the berm will be at least 10 feet above sea level," Mr. Gardner said.
