Levee Failures

WaPo reported Within a space of 15 hours on Aug. 29, three massive, concrete floodwalls in separate parts of the city suddenly fractured and burst under the weight of surging waters from Hurricane Katrina. The breaches unleashed a wall of water that swept entire buildings from their foundations and transformed what might have been a routine hurricane into the costliest storm in U.S. history. Today, exactly eight weeks after the storm, all three breaches are looking less like acts of God and more like failures of engineering that could have been anticipated and very likely prevented. Investigators in recent days have assembled evidence implicating design flaws in the failures of two floodwalls near Lake Pontchartrain that collapsed when weakened soils beneath them became saturated and began to slide.

Weakened soils became saturated. What do they think will happen when it rains. A LOT.

They also have confirmed that a little-used navigation canal helped amplify and intensify Katrina's initial surge, contributing to a third floodwall collapse on the east side of town. The walls and navigation canal were built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for defending the city against hurricane-related flooding.... The discovery of major flaws in the design of the city's levees and floodwalls could add billions of dollars to the cost of New Orleans' recovery.

Or maybe it will save billions of dollars if we think a little and decide why try to rebuild levees to protect land that is 7 to 15 feet below sea level, that has a mighty river on one side, a large lake on another side, and a huge gulf nearby. And no matter how high and how strong you build the levees, if a hurricane (like Wilma that had 40 inch rains in Mexico) goes over it, you will fill that bowl to flooding even if all the levees hold. The answer is not to build better levees, it is to only build levees to protect things like the French Quarter and other land that is above sea level, and let the rest become a lake.

CQ blogged The bad news: the Corps of Engineers apparently knew better than to rely on the levees. They have had warnings over the years that the bases of river silt and peat could saturate under moderate conditions and weaken the levee structures, but have done little to address the situation. Since the newer levee systems simply got added to the top of older levees twenty years ago, some in the CoE have questioned whether their engineering models guaranteeing protection to Cat-3 hurrican strength actually applied. Eleven years ago, the question of soil composition and design flaws became the subject of a lawsuit -- one that was dismissed without ever addressing this issue.

Lawhawk blogged MSNBC keeps trying to push the racial angle of distrust about rebuilding. How come we don't see similar articles of 'whites distrustful of officials rebuilding Biloxi or Gulfport or Waveland or Slidell?'

Because none of those cities are below sea level

That's because people in general are not trusting government to do the job. They've seen government fail them - at all levels - and some have decided to take the rebuilding on themselves while others wait for government to provide the answers. This isn't so much a news story as an op-ed with selective facts.