Project Katrina

I’ll just let this speak for itself:

The clock is ticking. Congress told the Army Corps of Engineers to give New Orleans what it thought it had, so-called Category 3 hurricane protection, and the Corps’ deadline is 2011. So, less than two years from the moment when the Corps again tells New Orleanians the comforting news that we’re safe, here comes confirmation that a money shortage may be inclining the Corps toward building a technologically inferior solution to the problem of getting rainwater out of the city while keeping storm surge from entering it.

The first problem is a recurring one: It rains a lot in New Orleans, and when it does, it often seems as if the sky is having a clearance sale on water. The second problem also recurs, though much less frequently: when a major hurricane is in the Gulf of Mexico, storm surge can get to Lake Ponchartrain and needs to be kept in the lake, lest it catastrophically flood the city.

This Times-Picayune story points out that not only is the Corps leaning toward the cheaper solution, which outside experts deride as technologically inferior, but, some critics allege, the Corps may be inflating the cost of the superior solution and underestimating the cost of its preferred solution—putting its fingers on the scale.

USA Today reports what I think anybody that even closely follows the situation of levees in our nation already knows:

Communities nationwide have repaired fewer than half of the 122 levees identified by the government almost two years ago as too poorly maintained to be reliable in major floods, according to Army Corps of Engineers data.

State and local governments were given a year to fix levees cited by the corps for “unacceptable” maintenance deficiencies in a February 2007 review that was part of a post-Hurricane Katrina crackdown. Only 45 have had necessary repairs, according to data provided in response to a USA TODAY request. The remaining unrepaired levees are spread across 18 states and Puerto Rico—most in California and Washington.

People living behind the unrepaired levees “have every right to be concerned,” said Tammy Conforti, head of the corps’ levee safety program. “If (people) depend on that for flood risk reduction,” she said of each unrepaired levee, “… those deficiencies need to be corrected.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina I heard people from both sides of the political spectrum talk about not rebuilding New Orleans and not upgrading the levees. It made me wonder if they realized that millions upon millions of folks need levee in dozens of states to keep their homes and businesses from flooding.

Sometimes, well OK a lot of the time the sheer ignorance of our population stuns me.

Who knows what is going to happen, but if the levees fail again three years after billions of dollars was appropriated to fix them, the failure of George Bush and the entire Republican party should really be clear to anybody with half a mind.

On the eve of Hurricane Gustav’s expected arrival, many in New Orleans, from residents of the Ninth Ward to the city’s mayor to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, have their doubts about whether the levees will hold.

“There is a real likelihood of getting some overtopping. Additionally, rain is a big factor here,” said DHS chief Michael Chertoff about water pouring over the tops of the levees.

Three years since Katrina and $3 billion later, the levees still leak and much of the repair work remains incomplete.

“Huge areas of Louisiana are going to be devastated. We’re going in essence to see what Katrina didn’t destroy, what Rita didn’t destroy in 2005 being destroyed now in 2008,” said Ivor Van Heerden, a professor at Louisiana State University who wrote a book about why the levees broke during Katrina.

At best the levees are estimated to be able to withstand water levels rising at the rate of an inch and hour. The coming storm, however, promises much more. In some places storm surge could reach 18 feet.

The Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with repairing the levees, says work was being accelerated.

Despite Congress authorizing $12.8 billion to rebuild the levees, only $3 billion has been spent. The engineers blame red tape, saying the studies, approvals and environmental committees have all slowed down the work.

The Army Corps has already been blaming environmentalists for their complete lack of process in rebuilding the levees, but considering that the local press recently found engineers filling the levees with newspaper, their protestations aren’t even really credible. In fact, they failed to use the money and are scrambling to finish in a matter of days what they haven’t done in three years since Katrina hit and the problem was identified.

Our Traditional Media has done a terrible job covering the real reason behind the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. But Harry Shearer, via the Huffington Post, has done his best to explain that the flood never had to happen. It was the direct fault of the Federal Government and specifically the Army Corp of Engineers. Period.

This is why Harry has for years called the aftermath of Katrina the Federal Flood. How he highlights what nobody else seems to want to write about,

This July was good to New Orleans. No major storms nearby, and a wealth of visitors packing the streets, clubs, restaurants. The Essence Music Festival, the big cocktail convention (seriously), then an international classical piano competition (ditto), and the SCLC’s national convention–compared to last July, when the streets were empty, the resettled part of the city was thriving and vibrant.

August brings a different mood. In Friday’s Times-Picayune, we learn that the Army Corps of Engineers is now scrambling—the paper’s word—to reinforce a crucial floodwall abutting a neighborhood that suffered disastrous flooding three years ago. Apparently, the Corps—which “concluded” on its own that Congress hadn’t authorized it to build a new, stronger, more deeply anchored floodwall before completing so-called 100-year flood protection in 2011—has realized the floodwall is far more vulnerable than it had thought.

More disturbing is the fact that the problem is the elevation figures the Corps used, right after Katrina, in calculating what was needed to strengthen the existing wall. They were “culled” from the original floodwall design plans. It’s been well established by the independent forensic investigations into the Katrina disaster that the Corps had a bad habit of using old, outdated elevation figures in the original design of the failed structures. So why “cull” those after the disaster proved them so disastrously wrong?

Combined with the continued reports of water leaking and puddling in backyards on the supposedly protected side of the 17th St. Canal—reports the Corps is still scrambling (my word) to explain—New Orleans is once again forced to ask: is this the best America can do?

Well this isn’t good news, but really something we’ve known for a while. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports the city of New Orleans is danger of massive flooding if it is hit by only a Cat 2 hurricane.

That assessment has been based on levee heights across New Orleans that indicated a strong storm surge could once again place the Crescent City underwater. New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, that Category 3 storm killed more than 1,800 people and caused more than $81 billion in damages.

Levee heights were to blame for much of the flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina and the Army Corps of Engineers were given over $7 billion to repair and construct levees capable of handling rising water yet the city is said to still be among the most vulnerable in the country when it comes to levees being breached.

For the residents of Louisiana bad news just seems to pile on top of bad news. Of course Hurricane Katrina and Rita in recent times cause enormous problems, but now it appears that glacial ice from as far back as 750,000 years ago is one factor in New Orleans sinking at a rate of 0.17 inches a year. A comprehensive plan needs to be put in place yesterday to deal with all the issues (most interrelated) that is causing this problem to continue to occur.

Sediments deposited into the Mississippi River Delta thousands of years ago when North America’s glaciers retreated are contributing to the ongoing sinking of Louisiana’s coastline, finds new research by NASA and scientists at Louisiana State University.

The weight of these sediments is causing a large section of Earth’s crust to sag at a rate of 0.04 to 0.3 inches a year, the study determined.

The sediments pose a particular challenge for New Orleans, causing it to sink irreversibly at a rate of about 0.17 inches a year, according to data from a network of global positioning system stations and a model of sediment data collected from the northern Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi Delta.

“When the effect of this sinking near New Orleans is combined with a potential 0.9 centimeter (0.35 inch) annual sea level rise that could result should ice sheet melting accelerate as projected by many climate models, it is possible New Orleans could see a relative sea level rise of roughly one meter (3.3 feet) in the next 90 years,” warned co-author Ron Blom of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Some good news from the Associated Press.

In a sign of continuing recovery from Hurricane Katrina, a group that tracks Mississippi River traffic says more deep-draft cargo ships entered the river in 2007 than the year before.

Last year, 5,442 vessels arrived at Louisiana ports along the Mississippi, compared with 5,103 vessels in 2006, according to the figures released Tuesday by the nonprofit New Orleans Board of Trade. Shipping traffic hit a longtime low point after the storm, with just 4,950 vessel arrivals recorded for 2005.

This is vital to the economy of New Orleans, since the port of South Louisiana, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge rank third, fourth, and fifteenth in total revenue worldwide.

When you really mess stuff up people get pissed. When there appears to be clear neglect on the part of the Federal government and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers people are going to want to be reimbursed for both their property and pain and suffering. According to MSNBC:

Hurricane Katrina’s victims have put a price tag on their suffering and it is staggering—including one plaintiff seeking the unlikely sum of $3 quadrillion.

The total number—$3,014,170,389,176,410—is the dollar figure so far sought from some 489,000 claims filed against the federal government over damage from the failure of levees and flood walls following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.

Of the total number of claims, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it has received 247 for at least $1 billion apiece, including the one for $3 quadrillion.

The article is well worth a read, but what I found most interesting is that the City of New Orleans has filed their own claim for $77 billion claim as well as a dozen plus insurance companies.

There is both good and bad news in the new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report: Known Performance Issues with New Orleans Drainage Canal Pumps Have Been Addressed, but
Guidance on Future Contracts Is Needed. The the one hand the GAO found the the US Army Corp of Engineers rushed to award a contract in early 2006 to Moving Water Industries that “resulted in deficiencies in key contract provisions.” The report also takes the Army Corp and MWI to task:

The report said the agency performed “limited market research,” used specifications for the pumps very similar to MWI’s and drafted a contract “not written as precisely as it should have been.”

The pumps were plagued by numerous problems, including undersized gear oil circulation motors, vibrations and suspect pipe welds, resulting in a lower pumping capacity than expected, the GAO said.

The bad news was related to the findings about the procurement process:

The Army Corps of Engineers followed federal rules when it awarded a contract to a politically connected manufacturer to provide pumps to this city after Hurricane Katrina, Congress’ investigative arm said Thursday.

The Government Accountability Office reaffirmed findings it made in May after the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal whistleblower agency, said in October that there was a “substantial likelihood” the Corps acted improperly in handling the contract.

The report was the latest look at the contract awarded in early 2006 to Moving Water Industries Corp. Corps officials in New Orleans installed the company’s 34 pumps before the 2006 hurricane season despite allegations by Maria Garzino, the engineer who oversaw their installation, that the pumps would fail during a hurricane.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA ) will pay to demolish the remaining eligible structures in New Orleans after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ ( USACE ) mission assignment ended more than two months ago.

The FEMA funds will pay a contractor to work with the City of New Orleans Legal Housing Unit to supervise and document the demolition and debris disposal of the remaining eligible structures. The contract should be awarded sometime this month. FEMA had paid USACE under mission assignment to perform this function prior to Aug. 29, 2007.

Approximately 1,800 homes remain to be demolished, creating around 630,000 cubic yards of debris. Demolitions should be completed by Feb. 29, 2008. Under mission assignment, USACE had supervised the demolition of 4,248 homes, totaling 1.5 million cubic yards of debris.

“This recent funding shows FEMA’s commitment to New Orleans and the region since these damaged homes remain a threat to public safety and have to be removed for this city to recover fully,” Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office Director Jim Stark.