Levees May Not Protect All New Orleans
    By Jeffrey Jones
    Reuters

    Thursday 23 March 2006

    New Orleans - Mayor Ray Nagin said on Thursday he is confident that $770 million of levee repairs will protect most of New Orleans this hurricane season, but officials warned another Katrina-strength storm could swamp low-lying areas again.

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is racing to meet a June 1 deadline - the formal start to the hurricane season - to have the 350 mile levee system protecting New Orleans and the surrounding area back to pre-Katrina condition or better.

    Nagin and presidents of two nearby Louisiana parishes said after a tour of levee and floodwall repair projects with Maj. Gen. Don Riley, the Corps' director of civil works, they were pleased with the progress, which is now 49 percent complete.

    "Based upon their scope of work, the number of contractors that they have, the progress thus far, it looks as though June 1's a good date and we should be just about ready," Nagin said at a construction site where massive temporary gates for his city's 17th Street Canal are being built.

    About 169 miles of levees were damaged in the August 29 hurricane. Levee failures led to flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans and wholesale destruction in parishes like St. Bernard and Plaquemines. More than 1,300 people were killed on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

    Nagin and Riley said they could not be 100 percent sure that neighborhoods among the worst hit after Katrina, the Lower Ninth Ward and parts of New Orleans East, will be safe should another big hurricane slam the region this summer.

    Both areas were submerged when a levee holding back the Industrial Canal breached, and both still lie mostly in ruins.

    Nagin this week warned anxious residents who want to rebuild in those areas that risks will be high for about two years, until long-term flood-control improvements can begin.

    "It's less risk with these repairs, but there still is risk and even if we go into September 2007 and complete all the authorized projects, there will still be risk," Riley said.

    When this round of repairs and reinforcement is done, the system should be stronger than before, so the danger would be from the levees being topped, he said.

    Various engineering groups have blamed breaches on a range of factors, from soil erosion and settling along floodwalls to poor design and maintenance by the Corps and its contractors.

    Nagin said he is now comfortable with Corps officials' claims about the quality 0aof the repair work on the levee system protecting New Orleans, most of which was 0abuilt in the 1960s.

    "It's a different time and space. The world is watching and monitoring it a lot closer, paying attention ... and I've also talked to some independent engineers, and they seem to be on track. It looks much better," he said.

    Some residents remain wary.

    "I don't know - I hope it holds. We've been through too much down here now," said retired longshoreman Earl Green, 79. He lives in a rented apartment after evacuating to Arkansas and Michigan and has opted not to rebuild his flooded home.

    The 70-ton gates set for the mouth of the 17th Street Canal, where a breach caused flooding in the Lakeview area, are aimed at protecting against a surge from Lake Pontchartrain.

    U.S. President George W. Bush has asked Congress to appropriate an additional $1.46 billion for long-term levee and pumping-station improvements. It has yet to be approved.