WP: New Orleans Levees, Corps of Engineers Faulted

[Pirate Smile]

New Orleans Levees, Corps of Engineers Faulted
Failure of Flood Walls Was Predicted by Studies, Professional Panel Says

By Joby Warrick and Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 25, 2006; Page A01

An organization of civil engineers yesterday questioned the soundness of large portions of New Orleans's levee system, warning that the city's federally designed flood walls were not built to standards stringent enough to protect a large city.

The group faulted the agency responsible for the levees, the Army Corps of Engineers, for adopting safety standards that were "too close to the margin" to protect human life. It also called for an urgent reexamination of the entire levee system, saying there were no assurances that the miles of concrete "I-walls" in New Orleans would hold up against even a moderate hurricane.

"The ability of any I-wall in New Orleans to withstand . . . is unknown," said the American Society of Civil Engineers' External Review Panel, which was appointed to oversee the investigation by the Corps of the levee system's collapse during Hurricane Katrina.

The civil engineers group also rejected the explanation given by the Corps that the system had failed because Katrina had unleashed "unforeseeable" physical forces that weakened the flood walls. In a letter to Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, the Corps' commander, the civil engineers cited three previous Corps studies that predicted precisely the chain of events that caused the city's 17th Street Canal flood wall to fail. The breach left much of central and downtown New Orleans underwater.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032401819.html