New study proposes changes in New Orleans area levee systems

William G. Gilroy in Notre Dame News: Less may mean more when it comes to the levee systems designed to protect New Orleans from hurricanes. That’s the conclusion of a new study by a team of University of Notre Dame researchers led by Joannes Westerink, chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences and co-developer of the authoritative computer model for storm surge used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the state of Louisiana to determine water levels due to hurricane surge and to design levee heights and alignments.

The lower Mississippi River south of New Orleans protrudes into the Gulf of Mexico, and man-made levees line the west bank of the river for 55 kilometers of what is known as the Lower Plaquemines section. There are no levees on the east side of this stretch of the river. Westerink points out that, historically, sustained easterly winds from hurricanes have directed storm surge across Breton Sound into the Mississippi River and against its west bank levees.

“This study clearly shows that the man-built west bank levees on the lower Mississippi River enhance the capture of storm surge by the river,” Westerink said. “The surges are generated by the prevalent easterly winds that are common for regional hurricanes, but they spill into the river. These surges then propagate upriver, endangering New Orleans from the river side.”

As an alternative, the study shows that the lowering of man-made levees along the Lower Plaquemines river section to their natural state, to allow storm surge to partially pass across the Mississippi River, will decrease storm surge upriver toward New Orleans.

“By eliminating the 55 kilometers of man-made levees on the west bank of the river from Pointe a la Hache and Venice, the surges propagating in the river from Pointe a la Hache past New Orleans will be lowered by up to two meters,” Westerink said. “This would save billions of dollars in levee construction to protect communities upriver from Pointe a la Hache.”...

FEMA image of the 17th Street levee in New Orleans

Inspectors examine levees in New Orleans, post-Isaac

Pete Spotts in the Alaska Dispatch via the Christian Science Monitor: Hurricane Isaac has come and gone. Floodwaters in southeastern Louisiana are receding. For Chris Gilmore, it's time to take initial stock of how his segment of a $14.5-billion, 133-mile defensive wall of earth, steel, and concrete preformed in the first real-world test of post-Katrina improvements in flood protection for New Orleans and portions of surrounding parishes.

Isaac was a minimal hurricane when it made landfall overnight Aug. 28-29. But its large size and excruciatingly slow motion – at one point stalling for hours over the southeastern part of the state – built a surge whose height here at St. Bernard Parish, estimated at between 14 and 15 feet, rivaled the height of the surge Katrina delivered.

The view from the levee top reveals large patches of dead-wood debris lying along the levee's base like so many casualties of a siege assault. Behind the levee and the new pair of massive steel floodgates that close across the four lanes and center median of Louisiana State Road 46, boats on trailers, RV trailers, and even trailers from 18-wheelers are parked along the highway shoulders. They belong to residents who live beyond the levee and who sought its protection for their hard-earned assets.

So how did this segment hold up? "It looks really good," pronounces the US Army Corps of Engineers' Mr. Gilmore, senior project manager for the St. Bernard Parish portion of the federally funded upgraded flood defenses.

Indeed, so far the most significant levee damage has come from wild hogs, who root around for worms and insects after heavy rains. These "hog holes" will require quick attention. They can accelerate erosion of a levee's earthen base.

Although inspections are still under way, the initial reaction to the post-Katrina improvements to the levees, as well as to the pumping systems that drain water from New Orleans into canals that feed into Lake Ponchartrain, is that they worked as advertised....

Levee repair in New Orleans' Industrial Canal after Katrina, shot by Stephen Marchetti, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Drenched New Orleans passes big post-Katrina test

Ellen Wulfhorst and Scott Malone in Reuters: Drenching rains from Hurricane Isaac brought flooding to the U.S. Gulf Coast on Wednesday, but elaborate defenses built to protect New Orleans after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina seven years ago seemed to pass their first major test.

The slow moving weather system, downgraded to a tropical storm on Wednesday, dumped massive amounts of rain to test new levees and flood containment systems and officials were careful not to declare a premature victory. "This is a slow-moving storm and it is going to cause a tremendous amount of damage," said Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, warning of another day of wind and rain ahead.

Water flooded over the top of a levy on the outskirts of New Orleans and threatened to flood oil refineries and towns in the state and neighboring Mississippi. It looked, though, as if most energy facilities had escaped damage.

In districts outside of New Orleans, rising floodwaters forced the evacuation of several thousand people from their homes, but no deaths or serious injuries were reported.

While not nearly as strong as Katrina - a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale when it slammed into New Orleans in 2005 - authorities have warned repeatedly against underestimating Isaac, which has brought prodigious amounts of rain.

Isaac slowed dramatically as it approached land and hugged the coast for hours before turning inland. This allowed it to take on more strength than many forecasters had expected, said Tim Doggett, the principal scientist at AIR Worldwide, a disaster modeling agency....

Hurricane Isaac on August 28, 2012, from NASA

Isaac officially reaches hurricane strength

CBS News: Isaac officially ballooned into a hurricane Tuesday that could flood the coasts of four states with storm surge and heavy rains on its way to New Orleans, where residents hunkered down behind levees fortified after Katrina struck seven years ago this week.

Shelters were open for those who chose to stay or missed the chance to get away before the outer bands of the large storm blow ashore ahead of a forecast landfall in southeast Louisiana on Tuesday night or early Wednesday.

Forecasters warned that Isaac was a large storm whose effects could reach out 200 miles from its center. Water may be worse than wind because the storm could push walls of water while dumping rain to flood the low-lying coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami upgraded Isaac to a Category 1 hurricane midday Tuesday, with surface wind speeds of 75 mph and flight-level winds even stronger, at 110 mph. The storm system was centered about 75 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River at 12:20 p.m. ET and was moving northwest at 10 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. It was 160 miles southeast of New Orleans.

CBS News hurricane consultant David Bernard reports from CBS station WFOR-TV in Miami that some areas hit by Isaac could see as much as 20 inches of rain. In Washington, President Obama urged Gulf Coast residents to listen to local authorities, saying in brief remarks at the White House that "now is not the time to tempt fate."

The president declared a state of emergency in Louisiana late Monday, more than 24 hours before the storm was expected to hit the Gulf Coast. The declaration makes federal support available to save lives, protect public health and safety and preserve property in coastal areas....

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (Aug. 23, 2012) Employees of Bremcor, a military contracting company, tie down geo-fabric netting that surrounds the detainee camps at Guantanamo in preparation for Tropical Storm Isaac.

Flood defense boosted in New Orleans

Rodd Zolkos in Business Insurance: A massive new system aimed at reducing hurricane and storm damage risk in Greater New Orleans that was developed in response to the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina will be completed soon, though its impact on insurance rates might take longer to be realized, some say.

The $14.6 billion Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System was more than 97% complete late last year, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hoping to finish the project by the end of June.

In late October, a group of insurance industry executives—and Business Insurance—toured many key features of the new risk reduction system with the corps. The tour was organized by Warren Perkins, vp and risk manager at Boh Bros. Construction Co. L.L.C. in New Orleans, and was intended to educate the insurance market about the risk-reduction improvements coming online in New Orleans in hopes they'd affect the area's insurance pricing and capacity.

The 133-mile perimeter system is designed to withstand a 100-year event, with the corps having improved and strengthened nearly all the levees, floodwalls, pump stations and surge protectors along that perimeter.

...“The system doesn't resemble what was here before Hurricane Katrina in terms of the level or risk reduction provided,” said Michael F. Park, chief of Task Force Hope in Louisiana, part of the Corps of Engineers' Mississippi Valley Division. The nearly completed risk-reduction system focuses on stopping storm surge at Greater New Orleans' perimeter, and pumping any potential floodwaters out of that perimeter.... Now if faced with a storm similar in track and intensity as Hurricane Katrina, “We should fare quite nicely in terms of flood risk reduction,” Mr. Park said....

Flood gates and new pumps under construction near Lake Pontchartrain end of Orleans Canal to prevent storm surge coming in to city via canal again. Shot by Infrogmation, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

West bank levee-raising won't take toll on east bank, corps officials claim

Mark Schleifstein in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: The raising of levees along the west bank of the Mississippi River by as much as 2 1/2 feet will not put residents of St. Bernard Parish and the east bank of New Orleans at heightened risk from storm surge in a 100-year hurricane, a team of Army Corps of Engineers officials said Thursday. The briefing was aimed at allaying fears of members of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, who have raised concerns that the east bank levees are now too low.

Corps officials said it’s actually the waves atop a hurricane’s surge that threaten the 15.5-mile-long stretch of West Bank levees that have been raised between English Turn and Belle Chasse. Those waves, however, would be created by winds blowing out of the east that accompany the few storms that could push surge up the river, said Max Agnew, a corps hydraulic engineer, and the waves thus would be moving toward the West Bank side of the river.
Concerns about surge traveling upriver were raised in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when several barges were deposited atop West Bank levees in Algiers.

But the corps didn’t decide higher river levees needed to be incorporated into the area’s system until last year, after complex computer modeling confirmed that some 100-year storms, which have a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, would push water over the levees.

Corps officials recently announced a second increase in the height of some segments along that 15.5-mile stretch, to be accomplished with either higher earthen levees or installation of concrete walls. Those are supposed to increase what the corps calls “resiliency” — the ability to withstand overtopping from surges caused by a 500-year storm without failing.

The designs also build in expected rises in relative sea level — the combination of sinking soil beneath the levee and higher water levels resulting from climate change — over the next 50 years, which could be between 2 and 3 feet. The average level of water in the river at the Carrollton Gage in New Orleans has been rising by about a third of an inch a year for the past 50 years, according to a corps study. The corps requires levees to be designed to accommodate the effects of sea-level rise over their lifetime, using low, moderate and high estimates of the effects of climate change....

Painting depicting New Orleans, on fire, after Hurricane Katrina; Louisiana Superdome at center. By Joy Garnett, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Tropical Storm Lee gathers strength, pounds Louisiana with rain

Richard Fausset in the Los Angeles Times: Thick sheets of rain from Tropical Storm Lee pounded southern Louisiana on Saturday morning as the storm continued to loiter just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, gathering strength with sustained winds approaching 60 mph.

The storm is expected to cause extensive flooding in southern Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, with rainfall of 20 inches expected in some areas. The National Weather Service, in a Saturday morning bulletin, said the center of the storm should hit the Louisiana coast in the morning or early afternoon, then move slowly across southern Louisiana on Sunday.

Officials in the region have taken the threat seriously, with states of emergency declared in Louisiana and Mississippi, and voluntary evacuations called for in some low-lying areas. In the New Orleans area, officials posted online a list of streets prone to flooding. They also put swift-water rescue teams on standby, though authorities said they are confident that the levee system will hold, bolstered by a multibillion-dollar upgrade since its catastrophic failure after 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

...A tropical storm warning is in effect for the stretch of the Gulf Coast between the Alabama-Florida border and the Sabine Pass in Texas. A tropical storm watch is in effect from the Alabama-Florida border east to Destin, Fla. Alex Sosnowski, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com, wrote Friday that the storm "has the potential to be the next billion-dollar disaster for the U.S., by way of epic flooding."...

This graphic from NOAA's website shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated

As Mississippi River recedes, flood warning lifted for New Orleans

John Pope in the Times-Picayune: Based on a drop in the level of the swollen Mississippi River, the National Weather Service on Friday canceled its weeks-long flood warning for New Orleans and points downriver. Despite this development for south Louisiana, the weather service’s flood warning remains in effect for points upriver, including Baton Rouge, where levee seepage has led the state Office of Transportation and Development to close River Road’s southbound lane from North Third Street to State Capitol Drive.

In New Orleans, the river’s flood stage is 17 feet, but the weather service saw no reason to maintain the flood warning as the Mississippi’s level dropped to 16.8 feet, where it is expected to stay through Monday before dropping another 0.1 foot on Tuesday, said Jeff Graschel, service coordination hydrologist for the weather service.

There are several reasons for the change, he said, including falling levels upstream and the Bonnet Carre and Morganza spillways’ ability to divert some of the flow. As a result of these factors, Graschel said, “we’re going to keep (the water level) right below flood stage.” The levee system in New Orleans protects the city from water levels as high as 20 feet….

In New Orleans, some levee repair post-Katrina in the Industrial Canal, shot by Stephen Marchetti, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Letting Mississippi run its natural course could save New Orleans from hurricanes

William Sargent in the Christian Science Monitor analyzes the stark long-term choices faced by everyone living in and near the Mississipi Delta: During the next few days the Army Corps of Engineers must continue making their Hobbesian choice between the ultimate disaster for New Orleans and an $18 billion bet that they can beat Mother Nature. To keep flood waters from breaking the levees and charging into the city, the Corps is making an $18 billion gamble that they can divert a fourth of the Mississippi’s flow down the Atchafalaya River without losing control of the situation.

The choice may seem obvious, but the Corps’ gamble also holds potentially devastating consequences for New Orleans. If it loses control of the diversion, the entire flow of the Mississippi could suddenly come thundering down the Atchafalaya – the course nature wants it to follow – never to be diverted back. Farms, towns, and oil refineries would be drowned, and the key port cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge would be left without their river.

As the Corps begins the partial diversion of the Mississippi down the Atchafalaya, coastal scientists should seize on the opportunity to consider longer-term shifts in the river’s course. It’s possible that this crisis could lead to a less costly and more sustainable way of dealing with the problems of coastal Louisiana.

Although such a shift in the river’s path would deal a devastating economic blow to the region, allowing the Mississippi to flow west down the Atchafalaya would ultimately be in the best long-term ecological interest of the area because it would build up the southern Louisiana coast as a buffer against future hurricanes.

… For thousands of years, the Mississippi River has naturally writhed back and forth like a water hose, spewing muddy sediment loads first one place then another along several hundred miles of coast. These movements built up a number of major deltas along the southern Louisiana coast.

This shifting geography has gradually reoriented the course of the river. Now the river is running about as far east as it can possibly go, and it wants to writhe back west, away from New Orleans and down the Atchafalaya River Basin instead.

But in the late 1950’s, Congress passed a bill to save the port of New Orleans by making it illegal for more than a third of the Mississippi to flow down the Atchafalaya River basin. This is akin to passing a bill to hold back the tide….

Water is flowing through bays at the Morganza floodway, May 14, 2011. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo)

After Katrina, Gulf Coast still vulnerable

Jessica Marshall in Discovery News: In the five years since Hurricane Katrina slammed the U.S. Gulf Coast, breaching levees and flooding New Orleans, one thing hasn't changed: Louisiana is still sinking at a rate that's only going to quicken. The questions now are, is New Orleans ready for another storm like Katrina? And going forward, what's to be done about a region that's headed back into the sea?

Since the storm, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others have spent millions to rebuild the city and its flood protection system. "We'll be absolutely ready for it," said Corps communications officer Wade Habshey, who is based in New Orleans. "What we have in place now can withstand a Katrina-level storm."

Beyond the city, though, there are still concerns. As coastal areas erode, residents living near the shore face a greater threat of flooding. This could become worse with global warming. Colonel Edward Fleming, commander for the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers, says coastal restoration projects are underway, and that he's in Washington seeking approval for six more this week. Still, he concedes that the state is losing 27 square miles of land a year.

…Leonard Bahr, a coastal scientist formerly with the Louisiana governor's office, now maintains an independent blog about the Louisiana coast (lacoastpost.com). "The model of bolstering the protections in New Orleans is inappropriate to be used across the rest of Louisiana," he said. "Once you build levees and start pumping, the rest is history. You're doomed to perpetual pumping."

…While New Orleans may be in better shape to face a storm, a bigger issue outside the city is the loss of wetlands. Wetlands provide a buffer against storms, and offer crucial habitat for Gulf fisheries species. Coastal wetlands are constantly eroded, especially in big events like Katrina. Historically, the erosion was balanced by the deposit of new sediment downriver.

…Sediment loss is only part of the problem facing delta lands, the Nature Geoscience study noted. Even if all of the river's sediment could proceed freely to the delta, sea level rise is outpacing sediment deposition by more than threefold, meaning delta lands are certain to disappear.

Crack in 17th Street Canal floodwall near Metarie Pumping Station. Shot by Infrogmation, who has taken so many informative, moving pictures of Katrina's aftermath. Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Katrina's lessons yet to be learned

An editorial in the Merced Sun-Star (California): Five years after Hurricane Katrina, Congress has committed nearly $15 billion toward protecting a major American metropolis -- the New Orleans region -- from another devastating flood. Those investments are resulting in a flood control system far more protective than the one that existed prior to Aug. 29, 2005. Will it be enough? Hardly.

More than any other floodplain city, New Orleans is living on borrowed time. Much of this metropolitan area sits below sea level, upon old marshland that is subsiding. It faces possible inundation from both hurricanes and Mississippi River floods. With sea levels rising and the potential for climate change to generate ever-more powerful storms, the ability of engineers to design a foolproof fortification of New Orleans is fanciful, at best.

…Ricardo Pineda, floodplain management chief of the California Department of Water Resources, has served on this new regional flood control authority since 2007 and has made 37 trips to southeast Louisiana during that time. He reports there is now an integrated approach to preventing flood damages on a regional scale, including elevation of homes and better coastal protection.

Even with that progress, many experts, including Robert G. Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, fear complacency. Bea told the Times that the current effort at 100-year flood protection in New Orleans "is not even close to what is needed."

…Also lacking in New Orleans is a commitment to strategic land planning. If the city and suburbs were to minimize their urban footprint, there would be much less land requiring fortification, and more space available for marshes and natural floodways….

A collapsed building in New Orleans a few months after Katrina, shot by Daniel Lobo, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Hurricanes cleaned up lead-laden New Orleans

Celeste Biever in New Scientist: Could the devastation caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita have had a silver lining? The sediment washed into New Orleans by the floods accompanying the storms may have blanketed over heavily polluted, lead-laden soil in the city, leading to a decrease in lead levels in the bloodstreams of children across the city.

So says Howard Mielke, who researches urban geochemistry at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mielke and his colleagues sampled soil in 46 neighbourhoods of New Orleans in 2000 and then again in 2006.

Before the hurricanes, which both occurred in autumn 2005, soil lead levels in 15 neighbourhoods exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency's limit of 400 milligrams per kilogram, and that this dropped to just six neighbourhoods in 2006. Lead levels declined in 29 neighbourhoods between 2000 and 2006 by an average of 45 per cent.

As soil lead levels had remained fairly constant between 1990 and 2000, and as there were no efforts to remove lead from soil during this period that could have accounted for this reduction, the researchers conclude that this drop was due to the hurricanes, which likely brought unpolluted sediment in from Lake Pontchartrain and the coastal wetlands. "This material is generally much cleaner than what you see in the city," says Mielke.

…Mielke says the natural effects of the hurricanes could be mimicked by soil-remediation efforts – and that his results indicate that this is a good way to reduce the amount of lead absorbed by children. "It demonstrates the possibility of improving the environment for children and protecting them against lead poisoning."…

East New Orleans after Katrina, photo by Infrogmation, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Flood-protection innovations discussed at New Orleans conference

Molly Reid in the Times-Picayune (New Orleans): Engineers and politicians should be more open to new technologies and integrated systems of flood prevention and mitigation, German engineer Erik Pasche said Friday at a conference on water management and urban planning in risk-prone communities that was held at the old U.S. Mint in New Orleans.

Pasche's lecture on "cascading," or compartmentalized, levee systems was a keystone of the two-day conference titled "Building Resilience," in which planners, architects, engineers and environmental advocates discussed challenges and opportunities in marrying traditional, levee-based flood protection with newer, innovative water-management systems.

Americans and Europeans are both apt to feel that once levees are built, "now we are safe," said Pasche, who is based in Hamburg and is the director of the Institute of River and Coastal Engineering. "But we know nowadays that this is not correct, because of the uncertainty which came with climate change. "…

As an example of such a system, Pasche talked about efforts to implement a cascading levee system protecting the flood-prone island of Wilhelmsburg, which sits between two branches of the Elbe River in Hamburg. The cascading levee plan uses a tiered system in which the outer dikes are built resistant to breaches and weatherization, allowing for controlled overtopping. Buildings in those areas have to be "amphibious" or raised to meet the expected flood level, he said. Inner levees decrease in height, according to risk, and again allow for overtopping, he said….

The island of Wilhelmsburg, from German Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

New Orleans a test case for global warming

Tom Darden, executive director of Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, has some pertinent comments on CNN’s website: …Working with the Lower 9th Ward community, with families who lost everything in Katrina, with cutting-edge architects and inventive builders, we learned some truths and made some discoveries we would like to share with the climate change negotiators in Copenhagen:

…It is not enough to attack what causes global warming; we also must prepare to live with it. We must reduce carbon emissions and adapt to the changing climate.

…People will go home, even if home is in harm's way. The pull of family, friends and happy memories proved irresistible for many in the Lower 9th Ward. The common history and culture of any community will keep people living in flood plains, along earthquake faults, and on shorelines, if those places are home.

More people are moving into harm's way. The number of people who live at the water's edge will continue to grow. The Lower 9th Ward is not unique -- more than 50 percent of America's population lives within 50 miles of a coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The same percentage applies to the world's population.

…Solutions exist to protect people and allow them to live safely in their homes. The consequences of climate change require every community to make changes that will increase safety and survivability. In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, we are building affordable homes designed to use less energy, reduce carbon emissions and run on solar power, as well as weather the next storm.

Our storm-resistant features include high foundations to keep homes well above base flood levels; hurricane-resistant fabric to protect windows; increased structural durability to withstand 130-mph or higher winds; and access to the rooftop -- because so many of Katrina's victims died trapped in their attics. This approach should be adopted by coastal-area builders around the globe.

Government has a unique and powerful role to play. Individual actions add up, but they pale compared to the reach and resources of government. We saw firsthand after Katrina how deadly and devastating it can be for a government to fail its citizens.

…It is time for the world's governments to step up. We are facing the most serious challenge to the health and well-being of the world since World War II. But instead of putting shoulders to the wheel, the leaders of the world are busy lowering expectations and tempering outcomes....

Damage in the Lower Ninth Ward, after Katrina, shot by a FEMA employee

Katrina damage due to 'monumental' neglect

Who needs climate change when you have a thick layer of US government fecklessness, stupidity, and arrogance? Cain Burdeau in National Geographic via AP: A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where two of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs U.S. $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses, and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages. Speaking in May, months before the ruling, Bob Bea, a civil engineer and levee expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told National Geographic News that the federal government could be on the hook as much as two trillion dollars.

The ruling is also emotionally resonant for southern Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that the flooding in the aftermath of the hurricane, which struck the region on August 29, 2005, was a human-made disaster caused by the Army Corps' failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city. "Total devastation could possibly have been avoided if something had been done," said Tanya Smith, one of the plaintiffs. "A lot of this stuff was preventable and they turned a deaf ear to it."

…Duval referred to the corps' approach to maintaining the channel as "monumental negligence." Joe Bruno, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, said the ruling underscored the Army Corps' long history of not properly protecting the New Orleans region. "It's high time we look at the way these guys do business and do a full re-evaluation of the way it does business," Bruno said….

New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 2005, shot by NOAA

Corps of Engineers prepares to fortify New Orleans pump stations

NOLA.com: Several dozen pump stations in Orleans and Jefferson parishes will be bulked up to better withstand major storms after $340 million worth of "stormproofing" that also adds redundant power sources. The goal is to prevent a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, when Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard evacuated pumping stations to protect workers, a decision that outraged many residents whose homes flooded.

After Katrina, Jefferson Parish began stormproofing by building stand-alone safe houses adjacent to certain pump stations. Then the Army Corps of Engineers jumped in, adding generators at the Sewerage & Water Board's largest station in the city and building more safe houses in Jefferson.

Now the corps has laid out the rest of its far-reaching plan, developed in concert with local water managers, to fortify and install more equipment at as many as 37 stations in the two parishes, as well as at S&WB electrical facilities. The details are proposed in a pair of environmental documents posted on a corps Web site for public review and response. If approved as proposed later this summer, most of the work would be finished by late 2011, though a few projects could last into 2013, an official said.

Congress appropriated stormproofing money for Orleans and Jefferson after Katrina, but it gave nothing for similar work in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. And it's an exclusion that worries officials responsible for helping to foster regionwide protection.

…The corps estimates that $204 million will be spent in Orleans and $136 million in Jefferson, but officials don't know whether that will cover everything proposed….

One of the pumping stations along Broad Street, this one at the intersection of the old Carondelet Canal. Neighborhood youths ride bicycles down Broad. Notice they have dust masks, as the area is still filled with debris, dust, and mold from Hurricane Katrina related flooding. Photo by Infrogmation (who's taken many photos of his home, New Orleans), early November 2005. Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

Storm surge barrier going up in New Orleans

Environment News Service: Defense of Greater New Orleans' most vulnerable area from storm surge has begun with the groundbreaking for the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lake Borgne Surge Barrier Project, the largest design-build civil works project in Corps history.

It is unusual for a civil works project to be designed and constructed simultaneously, but the Corps says the expedited process is necessary given the compressed timeframe to achieve 100-year flood protection in 2011.

When completed, the $700 million surge barrier, similar to a floodwall but much larger, will run for nearly two miles near the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. The 26 foot high barrier will run north-south from a point just east of Michoud Canal on the north bank of the waterway and just south of the existing Bayou Bienvenue flood control structure.

Navigation gates will be constructed where the barrier crosses the GIWW and Bayou Bienvenue to reduce the risk of storm surge coming from Lake Borgne and/or the Gulf of Mexico. The openings for each gate will be 150 feet wide….

Aerial view of a northern section of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana at the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW). US Army Corps of Engineers