Lengthy drought takes toll on local earthen levees

Darryl Ward routinely walks the levee along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain in Bucktown, using the solitude to pray.

But when Ward changed his routine one day this week by veering away from the water to stroll the levee's gravel crown, his sacred reverie was shattered by what he found: a series of holes and horizontal cracks scattered along the surface of the big dirt levee east of Cherokee Avenue.

from the Times Picayune