Corps takes blame for New Orleans flooding

NOLA.com ^ | 6/1/2006 | Cain Burdeau

[Saints fan]

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A contrite U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took responsibility Thursday for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina and said the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data.

"This is the first time that the Corps has had to stand up and say, `We've had a catastrophic failure,'" Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the Corps chief, said as the agency issued a 6,000-page-plus report on the disaster on Day 1 of the new hurricane season.

The Corps said it will use the lessons it has learned to build better flood defenses.

"Words alone will not restore trust in the Corps," Strock said, adding that the Corps is committed "to fulfilling our important responsibilities."

The $19.7 million report includes details on the engineering and design failures that allowed the storm surge to overwhelm New Orleans' levees and floodwalls Aug. 29.

[operation clinton cleanup]

Not Bush's fault?

[headstamp]

"The $19.7 million report......."

Must be a thick one.

[sinkspur]

The southeastern Louisiana coast is sinking at the rate of an inch per year. No levee can be built to withstand a foot drop every decade.

New Orleans will, in this century, have to be completely abandoned.

[JRios1968]

Of course it is! You see, Bush had Karl Rove use his time machine to send bad plans for the levees to the year 1950, then Karl Rove used his weather machine to send Katrina into New Orleans, so that it would flood the Lower 9th Ward, and it would destroy as many black-owned houses as possible, because the racists at Halliburton wanted to get the contract to rebuild New Orleans...

/Moonbat mode off

[capt. norm]

At last, they have referenced the Netherlands and their success (so far) in holding back the North Sea.

I would think that New Orleans could learn a lot from the Dutch as what they're doing seems to be working.

[sinkspur]

I would think that New Orleans could learn a lot from the Dutch as what they're doing seems to be working.

Is the Netherlands sinking? New Orleans and surrounding area is sinking, at the rate of one inch per year.

[capt. norm]

New Orleans will, in this century, have to be completely abandoned.

I agree. I'm wondering if they can re-locate the city on some higher and more stable ground, or would that take them all the way up to Baton Rouge?

[capt. norm]

Is the Netherlands sinking?

The Netherlands had already sunk. They reversed the process and reclaimed land from the North Sea.

[Torie]

It's one third of an inch per year, not an inch. Nobody knows the subsidence persists after all these years. Subsidence is due to the mushy ground slowly drying out over the decades due to the overlay of pavement. As the ground ceases becoming more dry over the decades, the subsidence should slow down, but it has not slowed down yet, for reasons not yet known. It is dropping one inch per year where the levees are, presumbably due to the weight of the levees themselves, but nobody knows for sure about that either.

The levees collapsed because they were built on mush, without an adequately wide base (which would require some billions of dollars and condeming a couple of blocks adjacent to the leveees, and deep enough pilings, and they collapsed like a cookie stuck in melting butter. There was seepage going on for a couple of years before Katrina, as water filtrated through the mush. It didn't take much added pressure to just bring them down, at the weakest points.

As to subsidence, I heard all of this today on NRP radio, per a new study that just came out, using sophisticated sattelite imagery or something. With respect to the levee thing, I am reading about that in Brinkley's gripping tale of it all, which is a great read, and I highly recommend his book.

[LasVegasMac]

Not Bush's fault?

Which rock have you been under?

This was a Rove deal from get go.

Who has that picture of the USS Rove launching torpedos at the NO leeves ?

[RobbyS]

When will people accept that any human construction will fail when the right storm comes? An earthquake the size of the early 19th Century earthquake in Missouri would half level St. Louis if it occured today.

[sinkspur]

WASHINGTON - Parts of New Orleans are sinking far more rapidly than scientists first thought, more than an inch a year, new research suggests.

That may explain some levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and raises more worries about the future.

The research, being published Thursday in the journal Nature, is based on new satellite radar data for the three years before Katrina struck in 2005. The data show that some areas are sinking -- from overdevelopment, drainage and natural seismic shifts -- four or five times faster than the rest of the city. And that, experts say, can be deadly.

Source.

[StJacques]

Torie, sinkspur is right.

Pop it up here:

New Orleans is sinking

[smonk]

that's about $3K per page, isn't it?

[LasVegasMac]

They reversed the process and reclaimed land from the North Sea.

And now they are reversing that process and giving parts of it back to the sea.

To be natural again. And make room for a deeper port entry.

On Discovery / History channel (?) recently.

[Torie]

It must be the same study I heard on NPR, and so maybe NPR did not get it quite right, but it still may be due to the levees themselves in that 10%-20% area, or much of it, although I heard or read a couple of weeks ago, that there is one area sinking rapidly for reasons unknown, that may be due to some fault or something. In any event, it is not an accident that included within the area with more rapid subsidence is ground where the leveees are. Just why 15% or so should sink faster than the balance, is a question.

[StJacques]

Torie, there is a lot going on with subsidence in the New Orleans area.

In the late 19th century a famous engineer named James Eads worked out the "Jetty System" that was put in place to keep the Mississippi River channel [at the mouth of the river] open for navigation into the Gulf of Mexico. Eads' incredibly innovative work had the effect of changing the coastal ecosystem throughout southeast Louisiana by channeling Mississippi River sediments straight out into the Gulf, away from the coastal marshlands, where they were previously deposited. Those sediments used to help lessen the turbidity of ocean wave action and periodic storm surge and either prevented or moderated coastal erosion. If you take away that sediment, and then aggravate the situation further by dredging coastal shell beds, which has been done as well, then the turbidity of Gulf water becomes a much more destructive force acting upon Louisiana's marshlands. And then, on top of all of this, the ongoing erosion brings with it a rise in the sub-surface water table in areas that were previously removed from the coast, but are now adjacent to it, a phenomenon that can be particularly destructive when those sub-surface rocks are water-soluble limestone, which abounds in South Louisiana. I know for a fact that this is part of the problem in New Orleans, as I have seen some news stories about streets that have had enormous limestone sinkholes develop underneath them since Katrina.

I'm from Louisiana by the way -- I live in Lafayette about 180 miles to the west of New Orleans -- and my late father was a Petroleum Engineer who did a lot of work in "Reservoir Engineering" in Louisiana, so I've been hearing this problem discussed for years.

[Torie]

That is all in Brinkley's book, but that does not address the issue of subsidence per se does it? That addresses the issue of the severity of storm surges does it not? Solid levees can handle storm surges if enough money is thrown at it, but subsidence is forever.

[dfwgator]

The Netherlands had already sunk. They reversed the process and reclaimed land from the North Sea.

The Netherlands is just a wee bit smaller than the US.