[StBernard] MRGO opinion

[Westley Annis]

Since I was asked for an opinion about the MRGO here goes. This is 
strictly my opinion and that of my husband who did work at the Corps 
for nearly 20 years, but left there in 2004. This is what the civil 
engineering family (our daughter is a sophomore in civil engr. at UNO)  
talks about in our FEMA trailer.

The MRGO was hailed by the local business and elected people of 
southeast LA as being an economic development that would bring 
prosperity to the area. This is well-documented and I have read the 
proceedings with my own eyes. Congress and the President approve money 
and dictate what the Corps builds and doesn't build, maintains or 
doesn't maintain, as we painfully witness these days and Congress did 
what our own business leaders and elected officials asked for, actually 
begged for.

In the 1950s era, there was no such thing as environmental assessments, 
mitigation of wetlands, citizen advisory groups,nor public hearings 
with common folks who were stakeholders. Back then, such public 
hearings were media events to show support for projects, not a forum 
for debate and opposing views.  (As I said in an earlier posting, the 
best thing that happened in the 1970s was the grassroots outcry against 
the riverfront expressway going through the French Quarter.) No one 
studied coastal zone erosion as they didn't study global warming. So 
it's a WHO KNEW situation, like smoking causes lung cancer and DDT 
kills bird eggs.

Fast forward to 2006. The channel has widened, the levees and banks 
slide into the deep channel over time, dredging is continually required 
due to this subsidence and after storms like Hurricane Georges that 
push silt up the channel which does not have a current like the 
Mississippi River, and saltwater intrusion via the channel killed the 
coastal vegetation.

It has also been stated by many researchers (although a few dispute 
this)  that the rising level of our oceans due to the melting of polar 
ice caps due to global warming is also changing our climate creating 
stronger hurricanes as the temperatures of our oceans rise.  Hard to 
dispute when you see on tv chunks of glaciers falling off.

Furthermore, surveyors and geologists contend that our coastal lands 
are settling into the water for a variety of reasons that I won't go 
into here.

Combine the above three paragraphs, and here are our conclusions.

Our coastline is no longer the first line of defense when tidal surges 
approach. The photos that compare the loss of land mass is shocking and 
I wish I could attach the satellite images on this web posting. Bobby 
Jindal referred to our wetlands as horizontal levees, because they 
absorbed the energy of the rising water and were buffers that slowed it 
down. The MRGO by contrast, is a clear, open path that non-government 
engineers are contending allowed the rising water to pick up speed and 
pound the first things they hit, the levees.  Picture the difference 
between the force that a bowling ball rolling on a slick lane hits the 
pins to the force that a bowling ball rolling on thick grass would hit 
the same pins. The lack of friction means the energy is not being 
absorbed until it hits an obstruction like a levee or our houses. 
Louisiana's hurricane levees were not designed for wave attack and thus 
you see no armoring on the banks to protect them as you see on a 
Mississippi River levee. They are designed for gradually rising water, 
or shall we say used to be designed for that.

We agree that the lack of  coastal wetlands, Lake Pontchartrain, and 
Lake Borgne  combined with the height of the tide of water that the 
winds pushed into Louisiana are key factors and always will be, even if 
the MRGO was filled in totally today whether it was filled with 
Mississippi River sediment, Katrina debris, or the levees were knocked 
down into the channel. We are always at the risk of flooding as is 
Galveston, Mobile, Tampa, etc.

Research using computers and physical models can estimate the affect of 
the MRGO in its present state compared to lessening its depth or 
filling it entirely. However, we will probably learn more from actual 
storms hitting the area before such analysis is completed. The 
model/study that was being done by the Corps for several years on the 
MRGO and corresponding levee heights was not completed when it was 
originally supposed to be finished several years ago. Nita Hutter can 
tell you how many times she asked the Corps about when the results 
would be made public and the responses she received.  The MRGO is a 
pipeline to the Gulf and there is no disputing that. The bigger the 
pipeline, i.e. deeper and wider the channel, the more the impact. Just 
like the loss of so many miles of coastline allows so many more feet of 
storm surge. The numbers vary depending on who is giving the 
information.

In our opinion, we suffer a one/two/three punch, and punches one and 
two are things that hurricane levees have not been designed for, but 
should be. Because of the MRGO is a pipeline to the Gulf, well before 
the storm approaches the water pushes up the MRGO. Why is this first 
punch so bad? Because the hurricane levees are also not designed for 
having water against them for a long time period of time the way a 
Mississippi River levee is designed. So the levee soils are saturated 
with water which weakens them for many hours before the second punch 
comes. The second punch is the rush of Gulf water in the channel which 
pounds the faces of the levees with such velocity because there is 
nothing to slow it down and when it overtops the levee, the water 
scours away the grass and soil and levees fail. The third punch is when 
the water has flooded the entire coastline such that the water doesn't 
even know that the MRGO or any other canal is underneath.  The Corps 
and others have to consider all three punches, not just the third 
punch.  Considering the third punch alone leads a person to say that 
the MRGO didn't matter.

The Kellers