[StBernard] The Corps of Engineers says levees in local parishes will have to be raised as much as 8 feet to avoid big changes in flood maps

[Westley Annis]

The Corps of Engineers says levees in local parishes will have to be raised
as much as 8 feet to avoid big changes in flood maps

Tuesday, April 04, 2006
By Robert Travis Scott
Capital bureau 

BATON ROUGE -- Some sections of levee in the New Orleans area require little
or no height adjustments, while other sections must be raised by as much as
8 feet to satisfy the Army Corps of Engineers that the structures will
withstand the next hurricane of the century, a corps official reported to
the state's flood protection panel Monday. 

Dan Hitchings, civilian director of the corps' Task Force Hope, told the
governor's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority that since Hurricane
Katrina, the federal agency has changed its reckoning of the height and
strength of levees needed to certify that they can survive a so-called
100-year storm surge. 

Without the improvements to meet that certification, the federal government,
and its critical flood insurance program, will assume that much of the
region has no storm levees at all. 

"If you can't certify it, then it's not there," Hitchings said. "The
majority of our system no longer can handle a 100-year flood . . . and
that's huge, the impact of that." 

News broke last week that the corps had put an overall price tag of $5.9
billion in additional spending that must be approved for certification on
all levees in the region. The actual height deficiencies of the levees was
new information reported Monday. 



Billions in improvements 


The new heights and the expenditures for them vary from place to place.
Levees in Plaquemines Parish would have to be raised by 2 feet to 8 feet,
depending on the section of levee, at a total cost of about $3.0 billion. 

Levees protecting the east bank of Jefferson Parish must be raised by 1.5
feet to 2.5 feet at a cost of $386 million, while West Jefferson needs
levees raised by a half-foot to 4 feet at a cost of $657 million, according
to the corps. These amounts are in addition to previously approved money for
levee improvements. 

On the east bank of Orleans Parish west of the Industrial Canal, the levee
system will be built to a certifiable level if Congress approves a $1.5
billion item in a supplemental appropriations bill now in the Senate, a
spending request already backed by President Bush that predates the corps'
new $5.9 billion call for higher levees. 

However, the rest of Orleans needs new financing. Algiers' levees range from
2.5 feet to 3.5 feet too low for certification, a $129 million job to fix.
Some levees in eastern New Orleans already are high enough, while some
sections must be raised as much as 3.5 feet at a cost of $710 million. 

For the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, the job will cost slightly
more than $1 billion for levees that must be raised by 1.5 feet to 7.5 feet.



Post-Katrina retooling 


Katrina changed the federal government's data point for a hurricane flood
threat, which is basically an estimate of the worst scenario that might be
expected in a 100-year period. Also, the government has more records to
consider since it last updated its threshold 20 years ago. 

"Larger storms are expected to happen more frequently," Hitchings said. 

The figures released Monday fit into a closely watched set of calculations
being presented to public policy officials locally and all the way up to
Congress and the White House, where a decision soon will be made whether to
commit billions more dollars to improve the New Orleans area
storm-protection system. 

Unless the corps is assured by Washington that the money will be allocated,
the Federal Emergency Management Agency will basically assume that much of
the New Orleans area has no storm-level levees for the purpose of drawing up
the new flood maps that will serve as a guideline for home elevations. 

Hitchings said the corps is working on a detailed mapping that would show
the consequences of not being certified. That data should be finished in a
couple of weeks, he said. 

Hitchings did not foreshadow what that data would be, but during and after
the panel discussion among state officials Monday it was clear that the
numbers potentially could show a massive need for home elevations across the
region. 


Bush's OK crucial 


On the positive side, Hitchings noted that Donald Powell, the president's
lead man on Gulf Coast recovery, has said that if Bush commits to a proposal
to bring the levees up to certification levels, FEMA can issue its flood map
advisories as if the certifications were in place. Actual financing or
construction would not be necessary for FEMA to take that step, but it would
be understood that the levee work would have to be done in 10 years. 

FEMA has released flood map advisories for St. Tammany and the River
Parishes but not for Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines
parishes. The advisories are supposed to indicate the elevation that homes
will need to meet federal flood insurance requirements and are considered a
critical step in the rebuilding process. The actual flood maps for all
parishes are scheduled to be released this year. 

State and local officials have been anxiously awaiting the advisories, which
were expected last month. The delay appears to be caught up in the
certification issue. 

It is possible that if the levees get the new 100-year storm surge
certification, homes in the affected areas might see little or no change in
their official elevation levels as it relates to storm surge. 

Storm surge is not the only consideration for FEMA in figuring the flood
maps. Floods can occur from heavy rains, such as from a slow-moving tropical
storm, and the flood maps are expected to account for the ability to pump
water out of individual communities, for changes in subsidence and other
factors affecting how flood-prone a home might be. 

The state authority Monday approved a draft of its annual coastal protection
and restoration plan, which still needs review by the Legislature and in a
public comment period. The plan was approved with the caveat that staff will
include information focused more closely on western Louisiana projects and
provide better explanations of how the plan would be implemented. 

The plan is a multi-agency initiative covering a variety of programs to
restore the coastal wetlands -- a key protection against hurricanes -- and
build levees. 

The authority also is working on a long-term master plan, with a first draft
due in October. 

. . . . . . . 


Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott at timespicayune.com or (225)
342-4197.