Corps never pursued design doubts (NOLA)

The NO Times-Picayune ^ | 12/30/05 | Bob Marshall

[T-Bird45]

The engineering mistakes that led to the canal levee failures that flooded most of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina were found and then dismissed in the Army Corps of Engineers' design review process in 1990, an investigative team reviewing the failures says.

Documents, obtained by The Times-Picayune and provided to forensic engineers studying the levee breaches, show project engineers made a critical mistake in assessing soil strengths on the 17th Avenue Canal project, said Robert Bea, a University of California-Berkeley professor who is a member of the National Science Foundation team.

[T-Bird45]

What a goat screw this mess is!! This will end up in failure analysis texts for generations. Definitely a read worth a click for the full article.

Based on the information in final paragraphs, the amount of pilings and footings required to meet the soil conditions would have made the project horrendously expensive and possibly would have stopped it. That appears to be the point that politics took over: jobs, payola, etc...

[dirtboy]

Based on the information in final paragraphs, the amount of pilings and footings required to meet the soil conditions would have made the project horrendously expensive and possibly would have stopped it. That appears to be the point that politics took over: jobs, payola, etc...

Politics always takes over when social inertia runs headfirst into geological reality - sooner or later, if you have a city below sea level, it becomes economically inefficient to adequately keep it dry. So corners will be cut until water finds its course.

[jackieaxe]

The only thing New Orleans seems to pursue is federal money. Jobs and responsibility are two things people in NO do not pursue.

[freema]

Chalmette is the parish seat of St. Bernard Parish, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, some 2 miles down from the border of New Orleans

Chalmette after Katrina
http://clceast.org.cnchost.com/images/2005/ChalmetteTrip/chal1/index.html.

[T-Bird45]

Engineering article ping.

[Gondring]

Politics always takes over when social inertia runs headfirst into geological reality - sooner or later, if you have a city below sea level, it becomes economically inefficient to adequately keep it dry. So corners will be cut until water finds its course.

Yep, and here we are, dumping billions and billions more into the hole that is so poorly suited for redevelopment. Who cares about geology...a few scribbles on an Engineer's Computation Pad and reality goes away!