Reply #10: a) MRGO did indeed flood Lower Nine, b) it was never a "project for St. Bernard".

[KamaAina]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091302196.html

Authorities have not yet concluded what caused the drowning of New Orleans, and most attention has focused on two breached floodwalls near Lake Pontchartrain, to the city's north. But now experts believe that the initial flooding that overwhelmed St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans came from the Gulf Outlet, a channel that was an ecological and economic disappointment long before Hurricane Katrina....

Mashriqui had warned that the confluence of the MRGO and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway created a funnel that would direct storm surges into the New Orleans Industrial Canal and on into St. Bernard Parish. On the Friday before Katrina made landfall, the parish's state senator, Walter Boasso, complained at a congressional hearing that the federal government was "playing Russian roulette" with his constituents.

Katrina's first storm surges apparently shot up the Gulf Outlet and neighboring Lake Borgne from the southeast, then overtopped levees along the Outlet and the Industrial Canal. The floodwaters eventually breached the Industrial Canal's levees, and officials believe a large portion of the Outlet's levees have been destroyed as well.

"That funnel was a back door into New Orleans," said G. Paul Kemp, an oceanographer at the LSU Hurricane Center. "I don't think there's much doubt that was the initial cause of the disaster."

True, the flooding in most of the city came from the drainage canals by way of Lake Pontchartrain -- but the worst flooding of all, with houses left standing in the middle of the street, did come from MRGO. Besides, what little MRGO traffic there was was all bound to or from the Port of N.O., so how is it "a project for St. Bernard"?