The major papers were on the story of FEMA issuing advisory guidelines for rebuilding New Orleans, but only the Times-Picayune teased out the essential meaning: FEMA, by only requiring a three-foot elevation, was saying that the post-Katrina flooding was a unique catastrophe, one that shouldn't guide building plans for the future. And the national media missed the second part of the story: at the same press conference, the Army Corps of Engineers dropped the second shoe:
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said plans for the upgraded levee system would include the replacement of up to 36 of the existing 56 miles of flood walls; armoring the levees; building flood-proof pumping stations near Lake Ponchartrain that could be staffed during hurricanes; and installing permanent floodgates along the canals that broke under the weight of Katrina's storm surge.
The entire system, he said, would be completed by 2010. By June, when the hurricane season begins, he committed the corps to repairing levees to "pre-Katrina levels," with the addition of temporary floodgates on the canals.
Strock's announcement came on the heels of his recent admission that a federal "design failure" caused the 17th Street and London canal levees to breach during Katrina, confirming assessments made by state and independent engineers months ago.
The floodwalls, the part of the system that breached most notoriously at 17th St., were what Strock admitted last week in Senate testimony were the subject of "design and construction flaws" by the Corps. Were the Corps not covered by sovereign immunity -- here's the good news -- these admissions and concessions would not be coming months late under the pressure of independent watchdogs but rather years late under the pressure of plaintiffs' attorneys.
UPDATE: After unjetlagging myself, I re-read the Times story on the updated flood-map advisories, and one word jumped out: lenient. That was the key word in the headline, in the story, and in the paper's decision to make this the lead story yesterday. Note that the Corps' admission of culpability wasn't even on the front page last week, but buried in a story about something else. But the "leniency" made this hot news. For the Times, and for the commenters who mused about the oddity of setting levels at "pre-Katrina levels", one more time: Katrina did not drown New Orleans. It's now on the record, under oath from the head of the Corps himself, that the Corps' design and construction flaws of the floodwalls drowned New Orleans. What FEMA's belated release says is that somebody convinced FEMA that the Corps won't fuck up again.