New Orleans: The Corps Defends the Future

NEW ORLEANS--I'm preparing to make a documentary film on the causes of the flooding of New Orleans, and where the city goes from here, and so I decided to attend one of the community outreach meetings the Corps of Engineers holds, and advertises in the local paper.  So I found myself last night in a church auditorium in the Upper Ninth Ward, the audience about half full of folks, young and old, black and white, waiting for the chance to question reps from the Corps.

The meeting started with about a ten-minute "here's what we're doing, and here's what we're going to do tonight," explaining that the main focus of the meeting were two floodgate projects, but that questions would be entertained on any subject to do with the system.  The system, by the way, has had a name change: It's no longer the "hurricane protection system"--that didn't work out so well--it's now the hurricane and storm damage risk reduction system.  They even showed a PowerPoint slide emphasizing "residual risk"--i.e., don't blame us next time.

Then came a fifteen-minute video showing the construction process for both projects.  This stuff was so good, a woman sitting behind me, when she asked a question, said, "That was like Pixar."  Both she and I asked the same question: how much did it cost?  The Corps reps wrote down the question, though they didn't know the answer. 

Some money quotes from the session: although many commenters to my posts insist that "the Corps only does what Congress tells them to do," one of the Corps reps (Ron. sorry, didn't get a last name) described the post-Katrina process a little more honestly, if opaquely: "We were helping Congress develop language".  Later, boasting of the level of protection the Corps is promoting (despite residual risk) by June 2011, he said: "You're not gonna see floodwalls collapsing, you're not gonna see levees failing."  Does that mean those things won't happen, or they'll happen out of our sight, or...?

Most interesting, given the drastic criticisms of the Corps' old system in the ILIT and Team Louisiana reports, Ron said of the Corps' critics: "Once they went through the forensics, trust me, a very large portion of the engineering community agrees with our approach."

Me personally, if I were running the Corps' outreach meetings in New Orleans, I wouldn't have one of its spokespeople ever use the phrase "trust me."  The audience was politely silent, but it's still a punch line.

Follow Harry Shearer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/letwits

Comments

[mcbrid35]

Cost of the videos is available at https://www.fpds.gov

Sign up for an account, then use the google-like interface to search "Outreach Process Partners"

Their Public Affairs contract includes video production.

Task Order no. 0009 (signed 1/29/09) is for "Animation/Video Depicting Proposed" with a value of $29,736 The Corps New Orleans District is notorious for not completing the description fields on contract actions, but this one, given the date - 1/29/09 - is probably for the Seabrook Floodgate. The video is here: http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/PAO/videos/seabrook/seabrook_video.asp

Task Order no. 0007 (signed 11/18/08) is for "Animation/Video Depicting the Inner" with a value of $34,416. This is likely a video of Inner Harbor Navigational Canal closure project currently under construction. That video is here: http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/hps2/videos/ihnc/ihnc_video.asp

Task Order no. 0004, modification 1 (signed 1/5/09) is for "WESTBANK WESTERN AND EASTERN TIE-IN VIDEOS" with a value of $5541. The original task order had a value of $57,670. Those two videos are here:

Eastern Tie-in: http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/hps2/videos/easttiein/easttiein_video.asp
Western Tie-in: http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/hps2/videos/tiein/tiein_video.asp

Based on these numbers, I would guess each video cost about $30,000.

All four of these videos are available here:

http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/videos/pao_videos.asp

[libertron]

I can tell you personally that the Army Corps of Engineers thinks and regets about their failure in New Orleans. I attended a meeting here in Fargo/Moorhead after the flood this year and they were totally for a passive river diversion, rather than a system of floodwalls and levees that would have been cheaper. (And that kind of system worked just fine this year in Grand Forks/East Grand Forks; it was built after the 1997 flood, but before Katrina.)

They did not say it flat out in the meeting, but in one of many of their reasons against levees, they mentioned their failure in New Orleans, and all the people killed there and property damage, and said that a passive diversion would at least not make things worse than if nothing was done.

There are many pros/cons to either solution here, but I came out of that meeting understanding that they were dead-set against building floodwalls here only because of the Katrina disaster.

[HoppinHill]

This is lovely to hear that some at the USACE 'think and regret' their failure in New Orleans. But I promise you that Maj Gen Don Reily (USACE) in January 2008 stood in front of us, New Orleanians and said it was the local New Orleanians who were to blame for the levee failures.

Imagine losing everything you ever had, and hearing the organization responsible tell you it's your fault?

No one at the Corps has been fired, no one has been reprimanded, and nothing has changed since the USACE saw a spectacular failure of one of its most expensive systems.

[MelRoy]

I wasn't at the meeting so don't know exactly what was said, but I was there during and after Betsy. At the time, the ACE wanted to try something different. In fact, an Act of Congress mandated it and President Johnson signed it into law.

The solution that the ACE came up with - which was probably viable - was to install a gate-type system similar to what the Dutch have since used around the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. It was called the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Barrier Project. The storm gates would have closed off the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Passes.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "The project was stopped on Dec. 30, 1977, by U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz Jr., who said the corps' environmental impact statement had failed to satisfy federal environmental laws. Schwartz ruled that the region "would be irreparably harmed" if the barrier project was allowed to continue. He chastised the Army for its inadequate environmental impact statement, which was based in part on a single biologist who never submitted a written report."

"The project faced strong opposition from the environmental group Save Our Wetlands, fishermen and the St. Tammany Parish, just north of Lake Pontchartrain, which had hoped to see a large shipyard built on a bayou. The shipyard was never built; today the area is underwater."

[MelRoy]

From a piece Jeff Young from Living On Earth did:

"The Corps proposed this diversion in the 60's but didn't get it built until the 90's. Once built, it was nearly derailed by a billion-dollar lawsuit from oystermen who claimed the incoming freshwater damaged oyster beds. And while the corps spent $26 million at Caernarvan to help repair wetlands, it spent many times that on another project which destroys wetlands: the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet."

From the LA Times:

"The Orleans Levee District is responsible for maintenance and employs work crews to trim grass along the levee slope. But trees and bushes sprouted from the yards of private homes near the breach site and were left untrimmed for years because of opposition from homeowners and the failure of levee officials to move aggressively."

And from SFGate: "What happened? By 1968, a Congress worn down by the Vietnam war and economic turmoil began reining in spending; at the same time, the work met resistance from Louisiana politicians, communities, environmentalists and businesses fighting for individual interests.

For example, the corps scrapped a plan in the 1970s to build a floodgate at the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain out of concern that it would impede boats and marine life. Next, the alternate plan to build gates at the mouths of city drainage canals was rejected. Finally, the corps built floodwalls on the canals — and they broke during Katrina."

[RepugsOut08]

I can well imagine that anyone with a conscience would have trouble sleeping at night, if they thought that, either they, or the organization they represent, was responsible for so much death and misery through negligence and incompetence.
I would like to imagine an organization now "thinking" about and "regretting" those failures, might be doing everything possible to make sure that, at the very least, the same city and people wouldn't be victimized by negligence and incompetence again.
Why, then, did the Army Corps Of Engineers lobby to successfully defeat a bill recently, that funded a study on how to construct superior flood protections in NO?
Why is Obama, the Corps' Commander in Chief, still calling the flood wall collapses a "natural disaster?"
Why have they changed their commitment from flood protection, to the less specific, and insecurity inducing, risk reduction?
The reason is, they're continuing on the course of rebuilding these levees to pre-Katrina standards that have already proven inadequate. Standards they themselves label "technically not superior." Would you buy a condom with that written on the label? Not if you wanted to avoid any unnecessary "regret" in the future.
Regrets are meaningless without a commitment to correct what lead to the regret in the first place. CRIMINAL! will be the word plastered on every headline in the future, should these levees be allowed to fail again.

[winningticket]

New Orleans needs a lot more than just floodwalls and levees. It needs a new justice system. Why is Harry that you are more focused on infrastructure? Katrina exposed massive injustices in New Orleans like the horrific Danziger bridge incident, people falling through the cracks in the jail system waiting six or seven months to get out. Then there's the GNO bridge incident when Gretna's stormtroopers with guns blocking people from fleeing a flooded New Orleans (forget the fact that these Gretna policemen were operating in the wrong jurisdiction). Oh and who can forget the sad story of an African American teacher being brutalized by cops in the French Quarter right after Katrina. The cops got off scott free. Unless there is no justice in New Orleans, I couldn't careless about the levees or floodwalls.

[GeorgeKaplan]

The most import infrastructure New Orleans needs is a Hurricane protection system that works. America needs a better justice system - not just New Orleans.

We will count you out for help.

[HoppinHill]

One: 55% of the nations's population lives in counties protected by levees.

Two: The levee failures in New Orleans was the WORST civil engineering disaster in the history of the USA and the worst in the WORLD since the Chernobyl meltdown. In such horrific conditions breakdowns like those you describe can occur.

Three: Had the flood protection been built right, and had Louisiana's wetlands not been degraded by the nation's thirst for cheap oil, none of those incidents would have occurred.

[xlntcat]

The Corp of Engineer's in NO is as corrupt and the government of LA and that is very, very corrupt. Billions of federal dollars have been poured into the state in the afthermath of Katrina and if the state had to account for its disappearance, they could fill up the prison system.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Here's a try at my priorities: justice is a goal to be sought for in every jurisdiction all the time. Its denial is always the product of people we trust abusing it. The disaster in New Orleans killed thousands, uprooted hundreds of thousands, mentally and physically damaged a community, its culture and its economy, and was a (let's hope) unique result of massive abuse of trust by people mandated by law to protect that community and economy.
The one is chronic and ongoing. The latter is catastrophic and in danger of repeating.

[RoseMerry]

"Trust Me" The two most dreaded words in the English language. No one worthly of trust needs to say these words. They might was well spit in your face.

[Bienville]

"I'm preparing to make a documentary film on the causes of the flooding of New Orleans..."

A non-fiction version of the IPET report?

[azureblue]

apologies to my mis posted Bush budget entries: They wee supposed to be in a response from HS way down thread.

Something that needs to be included in the documentary as a preface to the flooding of the city, is a description of SELA- the 1195 Southeast Louisiana flood control project, that was in place and functioning, until Bush cut the money so bad that levee work was stopped, the weak levees did not get fixed as planned (2004) and they gave way.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=southeast_louisiana_urban_flood_control_project

Note the entry for Feb. 2005.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Levees didn't give way: floodwalls did.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Most crucially to your consistent attempt to lay this all at the feet of the (no argument from me) criminally negligent Bush administration: if true, then why the laxness and reluctance to touch this issue on the part of Dems up to and including President Obama? If your analysis were true, it would be a no-brainer to cram the stim bill with money to fix all this and reap the relatively instant halo points. But, no....

[azureblue]

Trace the story back to the source- what was the origin of the levee failure? When was it first recognized that the levees needed work? What event (the flood of 1995) happened to finally create enough concern to address the problem? What were the provisions of the act, especially pertaining to the rebuilding of the levees? How were they to be implemented? And finally to the crux of the matter: Why were the repairs not done? Why was work in progress slowed / stopped after 2001? Answer- lack of money. Why? George Bush's budget cuts to give money to the rich.

Sure, you can say that Obama has not done enough, I agree, but that is not the root of the problem. Obama did not cause the city to flood. In true Republican fashion, Bush made a mess, then left it for somebody else to clean up, and take the heat for. Obama has his hands full cleaning up other GOP messes right now.

And what I have put forth is true- all you have to do is to go read Bush's budgets - the facts and sources are indisputable. And I will be happy to send you my Katrina diary, started the day before Katrina hit, if it will help clear this up.

But back OT, Your documentary must begin at least with SELA, and why it was not implemented by the time Katrina hit. And, yes, lay the blame at Bush's feet.

[xlntcat]

Do your research? We have already crammed more than enoungh money into the state of Louisiana to fix all of this but the money disappears and nothing gets done. Someone in the federal government needs to start holding Louisiana accountable or cut them off.

[azureblue]

Bush's 2001 Budget

Bush signed his massive $1.3 trillion income tax cut into law—
a tax cut that severely depleted the government of revenues it needed to address critical priorities. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American.

Bush’s first budget introduced in February 2001 proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed providing only half of what his own administration officials said was necessary to sustain the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage.

[mcbrid35]

SELA is an interior drainage program. It builds bigger canals and pump stations for rainwater to be evacuated from the city. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with storm surge protection. The walls (and levees) that failed in Katrina west of the Industrial Canal were built in the early 1990s and had been sitting there for 15 years.

As a former resident of a neighborhood where SELA projects were completed, I can personally attest that the tens of million of dollars spent there to reduce flooding from rainfall by a few inches did nothing to stop the eight feet of Lake Pontchartrain water that flooded every house in the neighborhood, including mine. However, they have stopped serious flooding from rainstorms.

To the masses out there: please read before posting.

[diak0n0s]

Will they be able to repair the portion of the levy that George Bush destroyed to let the flood waters into the 9th ward?

I heard that this area was the most heavily damaged.

And. . . . what's to keep GWB from doing it again?

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

Please read something factual to improve your understanding of this situation. Google ILIT report and read the executive summary.

[diak0n0s]

With all jesting aside. . .

I was in the 9th ward to help clean it up two years ago, with my brethren from No Greater Love.

My earlier post was in reference to how this disaster was politicized.

[azureblue]

Bush's 2004 budget

In 2004, Bush cut the SELA money from $100 million to $16.5 million, and Lake work funding from $27M to $3,9M. Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, would not be filled because of budget shortfalls. Corps officials said in April “that the lack of money will leave gaps in the structure, weakening its effectiveness and pushing back its completion date.” Worse, because budget cuts had been compounding for three years straight, “even after all the gaps are closed, the levee must settle for several more years until it reaches its final height.”

“We are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us,” Jefferson Parish emergency manager Walter Maestri said at the time, desperately begging the Bush administration to reevaluate its budget decisions. “We’ll end up so far behind that we can’t catch up."

[mcbrid35]

Once again: SELA is interior drainage, LPV (Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity is storm protection). Also, it wouldn't have mattered how much money was thrown at the Corps in the Bush admin, because all the structures that faled in New Orleans were already built.

[JScott]

Interestingly the Dutch offer help and expertise in this area but of course the ACOE declines.
Sad.

[sposton]

We have the expertise but we squander our resources in Afghanistand, Iraq and over 800 military basis around the world, plus all the military hardware that goes along with it. Add to that payment on interest of our national debt which is approaching the amount we spend on the military and you get the idea why we can't have what Dutch have.

[doctorj2u]

"Trust me." What a joke. How can I trust anything anymore. I can understand (or at least rationalize) how the levees were a low priority before the storm. There is no glamor in it for politicians. But once an American city was destroyed by the failure of governmet to do its job, I cannot comprehend how they are getting away with doing it again. Where is the press? Why are they not doing their job putting heat on the politicians? It seems you have to love New Orleans to care. I am so disappointed in my country. I am a cynic of everything I believed in for 50 years. Civic responsibility and morality has been sold out to greed and selfishness. Good luck with your documentary. I thank you for loving New Orleans.

[CSE]

I would have thought you would be a frequent attendee at such meetings, given your interests and reporting in the matter.

When you get to the documentary phase, Ron (whose last name you'll need then) probably won't be so opaque. Assuming he is though, and if he repeats, "We were helping Congress develop language", be sure to follow the developed language and any other recommendations through congress to see how it gets twisted and modified by otherwise uninformed individuals and non-engineers with other uses for the money being allocated. In fact, if you can gain the confidence of local ACOE personnel, see if you can distinguish between their personal desire to implement the best system possible and what they are eventually directed to do. Their view of the bureaucracy that impedes progress is much better than yours.

Anyway, I look forward to your documentary.

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

My view is influenced by people who have worked (and continue to work) for the Corps....

[MelRoy]

I really hope your documentary looks hard at "flood politics" in America.

For example, why did the Flood Prevention Act of 1928 only designate that levees should be more, bigger and stronger and not look back to before the Great Flood of 1927? Many experts believe the reason the flood damage was so extensive was the "levees only" policy of the ACE. From a review of John Barry's excellent book on the subject by Shannon Jones: "Mississippi levees were not designed to withstand such a volume of water. Compounding the difficulty was the mistaken official policy, imposed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, that opposed the building of spillways and floodways in order to maximize the flow of water in the river. This was based on the mistaken assumption that an increased flow would deepen the Mississippi channel enough to relieve pressure on the levees."

You know the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act of 1954? Why was flood barrier construction put under the authority of the Secretary of Agriculture? That was a big mistake. Even though the Act prescribes a combination of different ways to mitigate flood damage, the reality is more, bigger and stronger levies, no natural flood barriers. If anything, people and industry are closer to rivers than forty years ago.

[MelRoy]

John Barry himself said - as reported here in HuffPo by Georgianne Nienaber last year:

"I'm really asking that they take a comprehensive look at the entire Mississippi River system, the entire Mississippi valley, from New York State to Idaho," Barry said. "They should look, for instance, at the dams on the upper Missouri River in detail, because they have a real impact on the amount of sediment that's carried in the river, which has a real impact on the erosion of wetlands in Louisiana."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/georgianne-nienaber/the-floods-new-orleans-go_b_108269.html?show_comment_id=13781389

[Harry Shearer - Huffpost Blogger]

There's a very good new book on the subject, "Catastrophe in the Making".

[theycallthewindmariah]

Harry... What you are doing this gives me more "hope" about our future than anything our politicians are doing. Artists always seem to lead the way.
ps. Put out a call for geologists who studied the area after Katrina.

[MelRoy]

Levees only part of the problem. And you can only build them so high, you know . It's part politics, part urbanization, part oil.

FACT: Deep water channels dredged for passage of large ships such as tankers and pipelines and draining of wetlands for drilling have destroyed the natural flood barrier of the south LA coast. Think of this natural flood barrier (wetlands) as a rubber wall and a hurricane as a runaway freight train. They got rid of the bumper so the train flies through until the next stop - New Orleans.

FACT: New Orleans is sinking under its own weight. Had building regulations in the past limited development; had they used lighter materials, the problem would not be so extreme.

FACT: Another gift from God (or Mother Nature - whichever you believe in) was silt in the Mississippi River flowing upstream to the Gulf. But since people want to live - and farm - literally on the banks of the river and its tributaries - and these people and the farm lobbies always get their way, the manmade flood protection systems have reduce the silt flow to near non-existence.

FACTS: God (or Mother Nature) invented floods. They also invented the most simple, beautiful ways of mitigating flood damage. Man took those away. Man can undo the damage. Wetlands can be restored, the Mississippi can be restored. It would cost money, but it would save lives.

[theycallthewindmariah]

Given all that, if you have a city with people who need flood protection, a responsible advanced society uses good science and good engineering to protect them. They study the geology and they sink the foundations for floodwalls deep enough that they don't collapse. And they have pumps that work and are in locations that won't be knocked out if something goes wrong. And they don't allow cities and states to become cesspools of incompetence and corruption and violence.

What was the overall cost of Katrina? Was it over 1300 dead? If I remember correctly, Congress appropriated something like 62 Billion for "recovery". The biggest disaspora in American history.

The rest of this country profited from making NOLA a dangerous place. It's always been that way. It's time to change that and make it an example of what we can do right.

[HoppinHill]

The levees did not fail due to foundations, they failed for a variety of reasons including but not limited to: poor design, levees in some places were filled with sand not clay, levees were too low and not armored.

Also, there is no credible evidence that the state or local government in LA were relevant to the flood protection failures. In fact it's refuted in Judge Duval's final judgment Jan 30, 2008, and In Woolley Shabman's Hurricane Decision Chronology.

Congress appropriated no money specifically for New Orleans. It appropriated $110 Billion for three storms covering four states.

[MelRoy]

Not sure about this - I thought the biggest diaspora in US history was the Civil War or the Dust Bowl - but NOLA certainly ranks right up there.

But having lived in NOLA during the 70s I am aware of the "flood politics" of the place. After Betsy, the ACE wanted to build a gated flood wall by the lake, but the wealthy residents of Lakeview wouldn't allow it. They would rather have the entire Ninth Ward flooded out than have their lake views interrupted by a noisy mechanical flood barrier. And if you do your homework, you'll know that the (then) wealthy residents of the French Quarter and Garden District lobbied to actually destroy levees that protected the poor people of St Bernard's and Plaquemine Parishes, so they wouldn't get their feet wet. Read, research.

[HoppinHill]

A whopping 55% of the American population lives in counties protected by levees according to FEMA on September 10, 2009. So should we all move?

[MelRoy]

Part of it is the design of the levees themselves. In defence of the ACE, they have tried to introduce gated levees, which allow the silt to settle back into the rivers, but it seems to me from everything I've read that politics and money have interfered with the introduction of "eco-friendly" flood barriers which actually work. Besides marvels of engineering, there are a number of other ways to divert floodwaters. But certainly, part of the problem is the lack of floodplains and wetland habitats (marshes). And too much hard surface. There's nowhere for water to go except into people's properties...or so it seems.

So how do other low-lying, flood-prone, highly populated places like Zeeland and East Anglia deal with it? Because they had the political will to make some people move, to reclaim land and to spend money to pay the best engineers to erect the Thames Barrier and the more comprehensive Dutch system ("Delta Plan").

Yes - some people will have to give up their riverside and lakefront homes. They represent perhaps a fraction of a percent of the population. They will have to move, to protect the 45% whose homes and livelihoods and currently estimated to be threatened by flooding.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/12/05/holland_goes_beyond_holding_back_the_tide/

[Stuart]

Whose "FACT" is it that New Orleans is "sinking under its own weight"?

Would "lighter materials" really make a difference for buildings supported by structural pilings driven down to geologically stable subterranean formations , as nearly every structure in New Orleans is?

Granted: organic soils decompose, dry out, compress, and subside, but this isn't because of weight. For residences, a cubic yard of soil is significantly heavier than the wood frame structure above it.

[Bienville]

Fact: There is no tradeoff between lake views and hurricane floding in the Lower Ninth Ward, St. Bernard or Plaquemines. They are different separate systems with similar but unrelated problems. Lakeview, for example, is threatened by Lake Ponchartrain and has no contact with Lake Borgne. Conversely, the LNW, StB and Pl are threatened by Lake Borgne and have no contact with Lake Ponchartrain.

Fact: Most damage was done to the wetlands through the many miles - 8000, by one estimate - of small exploration canals criss-crossing the wetlands. The navigation canals that can carry tankers are destructive, no doubt, but are far from the worst offender.

Fact: The parts of New Orleans that are sinking are former marshlands. They are sinking because the surficial soils are being drained by street drainage systems. As the highly organic soils are dried, they shrink in volume. The sinking areas are mostly open leafy suburbs with large grassy lawns and common areas.

Fact: Most structures in New Orleans are pile-supported. Little of their weight bears on the marsh soils. As for lightweight construction, every home I know of is a woodframe structure. Many are on wood-joist foundations above the ground. Lightweight materials ARE used in New Orleans due to subsidence concerns.

Fact: A goodly portion of the silt that formerly arrived in South Louisiana is now trapped above hydroelectric and flood control dams thousands of river miles above New Orleans. We would love to have that material to spread across the wetlands again.