Flood Control in Mount Vernon, Seattle, USA

AquaFence Vs Sandbags.

he first full installation of AquaFence flood protection system took place during a demonstration and installation day in Mt. Vernon, Washington State on September 24th 2007. As the first town in the USA to choose the revolutionary AquaFence system, Mt. Vernon’s state-of-the-art flood fighting arsenal is now ready to be shown to the rest of the country.

Click here to see the video clip from NBC King5.com News report.
(Windows Media Player required.)

MOUNT VERNON - When it comes to flood walls, perhaps it's best to leave it to the Norwegians. Ref. Skagit Valley Herald. The city of Mount Vernon has decided to fight their future flood problems along the downtown waterfront with the AquaFence` mobile flood protection system.

Representatives from the city's Public Works Department said the wall will replace the old sandbags that flood fighters know so well. "We certainly saw in this last flood event the amount of time and manpower and energy that goes into building a sandbag wall like that, and the dependency on volunteers can be problematic," they said. Now that the city has decided to buy the "Norwegian wall", it would run about 1,400 feet from Division to Kincaid streets. Each section of wall weighs about 150 pounds. With two city staff members posted every 100 feet, the wall could be set up in about two hours.
A typical sandbag wall can take more than 12 hours to erect.

The portable wall will now allow the city to wait longer to monitor the forecast before building the protection wall, and it would take less time to remove the wall after the flood risk subsides.

This is the first portable flood wall AquaFence has sold in the United States.

The wall relies on the weight of the water to press down and stabilize the wall, creating a seal that would theoretically keep water out of downtown Mount Vernon.

When testing the system together with sandbags, in Mount Vernon Jan 2007, water started leaking out of the sandbag side of a basin on the revetment that city staff had constructed using about 1,500 sandbags and 28 linear feet of AquaFence flood wall. It was a really good example of how bad sandbags behave when the water starts pouring out the other way. AquaFence Inc. is now established in Seattle, and ready to take further action in the United States.

For further information contact:

Caroline Ostensen
AquaFence AS
Tel: 00 47 6920 7170
caroline.ostensen@aquafence.com

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