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| New Orleans Flood protection long an issue of dispute |
| 2005-09-02 |
| The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years. Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms. Mr. Naomi grew particularly frustrated this year as the Gulf Coast braced for what forecasters said would be an intense hurricane season and a nearly simultaneous $71 million cut was announced in the New Orleans district budget to guard against such storms. He called the cut drastic in an article in New Orleans CityBusiness. In an interview last night, Mr. Naomi said the cuts had made it impossible to complete contracts for vital upgrades that were part of the long-term plan to renovate the system. This week, amid news of the widening breach in the 17th Street Canal, he realized that the decadeslong string of near misses had ended. "A breach under these conditions was ultimately not surprising," he said last night. "I had hoped that we had overdesigned it to a point that it would not fail. But you can overdesign only so much, and then a failure has to come." No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls. Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded." "It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick." Now the corps is scrambling. After failing to close a 300-foot break in the canal through which most of the floodwater entered the city, federal engineers decided last night to take the battle with Lake Pontchartrain to the lakefront. Starting today, they will prepare to drive corrugated vertical steel plates, called sheet pile, into the mud near where the narrow canal meets the lake, sealing it off so that the big breach farther in can be more methodically attacked, Mr. Naomi said. The decision was made after a day of fruitless efforts to figure how to drop concrete highway barriers or huge sandbags into the torrent. For the most part, the water between the lake and the filled bowl of the city leveled off as of last night, officials said. Weaknesses in the levee system were foreshadowed in a report in May on the hurricane protection plan for the region and the budget gap. The district headquarters said, "The current funding shortfalls in fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006 will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs." They also meant that there was far too little money to study thoroughly an upgrade of the protections from the existing standard, enough to hold back a hurricane at Category 3 on the five-step intensity scale, to a level to withstand floods and winds from a Category 5 storm. Hurricane Katrina was on the high end of Category 4 and, despite the extreme flooding, is still seen by many hurricane experts as a near miss for New Orleans. Since 2001, the Louisiana Congressional delegation had pushed for far more money for storm protection than the Bush administration has accepted. Now, Mr. Naomi said, all the quibbling over the storm budget, or even over full Category 5 protection, which would cost several billion dollars, seemed tragically absurd. "It would take $2.5 billion to build a Category 5 protection system, and we're talking about tens of billions in losses, all that lost productivity, and so many lost lives and injuries and personal trauma you'll never get over," Mr. Naomi said. "People will be scarred for life by this event." He said there were still no clear hints why the main breach in the flood barriers occurred along the 17th Street Canal, normally a conduit for vast streams of water pumped out of the perpetually waterlogged city each day and which did not take the main force of the waves roiling the lake. He said that a low spot marked on survey charts of the levees near the spot that ruptured was unrelated and that the depression was where a new bridge crossed the narrow canal near the lakefront. Some experts studying flood prevention with the corps and other agencies speculated that any dip in the retaining levee or walls there might have allowed water to slop over and start the collapse. Mr. Naomi said that as the power of the hurricane grew clear over the weekend, he and others who had worked to make the system as strong as it could be, given the design limits, could only hope that it would hold. But, he said, he knew that the chances were high that the rising waters and crashing waves would find a fatal weak spot in the 350 miles of levees and walls. As often occurs after a storm, Lake Pontchartrain is sloshing back and forth, sending pulses of water into the city and potentially complicating repairs, Dr. Penland said. "It's like you have a bowl of water and you shake it, and it sloshes back and forth," he said, describing a phenomenon that geologists call a seiche (pronounced sesh). "Mississippi Sound and Pontchartrain are real prone to seiches when big storms come through. We are seeing the slosh. Water is being flushed through the gaps in the levees." He said scientists at the United States Geological Survey estimated that the sloshing would gradually diminish in a few days. Until then, the city will be subject not just to normal variation in the lake, where water levels change about a foot between high and low tide, but also to the variations of the seiche. "You have not just the one-foot tide, you probably have three to four feet of water," Dr. Penland said. "Once we get to an ordinary tidal regime, when it plays out, that will be our opportunity to close those breaks in the levees and start pumping." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #14 Well, since several proposed upgrades were stopped in 1977 by environmental lawsuits, I imagine any attempt to build a huge seawall would be similarly stopped in its tracks. Here's the PDF file |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-09-02 22:32 |
| #13 The problem is that bedrock in the NO area is 70-100 ft. down, under a nasty mass of dirt, clay, swamp ooze, and other organic detritus. The only 'safe' ground is on the natural levees of the river. The rest is below sea level in some cases, and below river level in most. |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-09-02 15:48 |
| #12 Part of the issue is that NO needs to be higher. Well there is going to be a massive amount of deterus from this storm, starting with lots and lots of houses and buildings in NO itself. All of that stuff should be put into NO to serve as a new base upon which to rebuild the city. I agree that the correct system of dikes and storm gates should alleviate the worst another storm might throw at the town. |
| Posted by: remoteman 2005-09-02 14:53 |
| #11 "When the Levee Breaks" 1929, Memphis Minnie McCoy The problem's been around a while, yeah... |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-09-02 14:33 |
| #10 All across the country we have let infrastructure continue to age and fall into disrepair. We all want decent roads/bridges/airports etc but few of us want to pay the taxes required to maintain them (me included). Plus how many times have we heard the NIMBY cry of those who oppose new power plants (built with private money), new refineries (built with private money) or other projects simply because they don't want to be inconvienenced (the proposed wind turbines in Nantucket Sound that might of ruined Senator Otis's* view come to mind). True the Congress just passed a 200+B$ transportaion bill but the planning process and time required to acomplish the goals set out will be years. * no disrespect intended towards Mayberry's town drunk |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2005-09-02 14:30 |
| #9 Teddy Kennedy would make an excellent flood wall... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-09-02 14:28 |
| #8 In other words, a losing battle. No, just a big one. If the Dutch can reclaim and protect the Netherlands (a lot of which is also below sea level) from the storms of the North Sea, we can rebuild and protect New Orleans. Sure, some areas may have to be relocated, but not the whole city. Build a bigger levee system. Have multiple layers, divide city into zones so if one levee fails, you don't loose the whole thing. Ensure proper maintenance is performed on levees and pumps. Ensure pumpng ststions can continue to operate if city power fails. Think big. Why not a series of sea gates protecting the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain where it joins the Gulf. The Dutch do it on the North Sea, the British have one across the mouth of the Thames protecting London. Keep the storm surge out of Pontchartrain. I'm really sick of all the whining and hand ringing. We need to roll up our sleaves and get to work. And if the enviro weenies try to get in the way, plant them in the f*%king levee! |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-09-02 14:10 |
| #7 ..a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms. In other words, a losing battle. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-09-02 09:54 |
| #6 Sorry RB, but New Orleans is not just Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, and the French Quarter. Its the largest US port for trade. Time to read up beyond the tourist flyers and understand that NO is why Jefferson bought Louisiana. It is a strategic economic center for which there is no other viable alternative. Read up on the post futher down on New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize. This is the price of cost-effectiveness. The funding required before to make the infrastructure more effective against these events was never put on the table by both parties because they could dance with the federal treasury for decades upon decades rather than do the dirty 'unrewarding' work. All they've done is simply shift the burden to another generation [sort of like Social Security]. Now its time to pay the piper and we're going to find out how really expensive it was not to put the money into prevention in the first place. Hundreds of years and we still ignor the warning - an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. At least I hope all the NIMBY and environmental wacko obstructions were blown away by Katrina as well. |
| Posted by: Thinenter Phineque8219 2005-09-02 09:35 |
| #5 Stephan's comment was.."Does not speak well of the competence, planning, or even a basic understanding of the problem by the Corps of Engineers. Sadly, even after two millenia using it, we don't really have a perfect handle on the way concrete responds to stress placed on it by a body of water over a long time and under dynamic conditions. There are several components to this problem: 1. Water dissolves cement, little by little, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. The resistance to this process depends, on, among other things, how long the concrete cured before it was placed and the cumulative stress. 2. Concrete shrinks over time. This makes cracks. Water, especially when it is constant stress against the concrete, gets in cracks. It weakens the concrete. This makes more cracks. There are fixes to this (e.g. epoxy coating of the surface of the concrete) but the technology is still evolving. |
| Posted by: mhw 2005-09-02 08:31 |
| #4 Mr. Naomi grew particularly frustrated this year as the Gulf Coast braced for what forecasters said would be an intense hurricane season and a nearly simultaneous $71 million cut was announced in the New Orleans district budget to guard against such storms My surprise meter blew up this morning on they way to work. NPR did a story on this very thing and it turns out the 71 million dollar cut was for projects that had nothing to do with flood control or trying to stop the effects of a hurricane. They also had the former head of the Corps of Engineers on who was appointed by Bush and resigned over budget concerns. He said the same thing and also reiterated that the levy that failed was designed and built long ago and was thought to be strong enough. He said the Country can't lay the blame for this on the current administration as the decisions that led to this were made in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Think we'll hear this same thing on ABC, CBS, CNN, or NBC? |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2005-09-02 07:31 |
| #3 New Orleans (Nawlins) needs to go. People were warned this time, but next time if the levies are blown over night by terrorists, the city of half million would be under water by daylight. I have been to the Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street and sat at the Port of New Orleans and watched the big ships from around the world go by on the way up the mighty Mississippi through the Big Easy. Bourbon Street was a little grundgy during the day but at night when all the cool street lights came on, and the musicians by the droves on every block played the blues and the jazz in a way that I have never heard before, I knew Bourbon Street was a magical place. But it is now a part of America that needs to go into the mist of America's glorious history. And when New Orleans is officially sent under the grande ol' Mississippi, I want America to let the New Orleans have one of those funeral sessions they are famous for having as a send off, with thousands of those jazz musicians in the procession officialy saying a tear full good bye, to another golden memory of America. Thanks for the memories Nawlins, I'll never forget you. |
| Posted by: RG 2005-09-02 02:41 |
| #2 I think the 'tens of billions cost' estimates are not even in the ballpark. The biggest recent urban natural disaster, the Kobe earthquake, cost $120 billion for reconstruction (150,000 homes destroyed). New Orleans/Katrina seems about twice as big in terms of damage. Double the reconstruction costs to factor in lost output and the cost will be in the region of a half a trillion dollars. That money will (and has to) come from somewhere else. By way of comparison the US annual GDP is 12 trillion. So Katrina will cost about 4% of US annual GDP. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-09-02 02:36 |
| #1 Excuse me,but from what I am reading,the breach occurred in an area where no breach was expected and that had already been upgraded. Does not speak well of the competence,planning,or even a basic understanding of the problem by the Corps of Engineers. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2005-09-02 01:30 |