[StBernard] Flood report stirs emotions

[Westley Annis]

Flood report stirs emotions

Corps official tells committee overtopping had large role 

By WILL SENTELL
Capitol news bureau 
Published: Apr 25, 2006 


A top federal official ignited controversy Monday when he said overtopped
rather than breached levees accounted for much of the water than engulfed
New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

A federal investigation due out in June will say just that, Dan Hitchings,
director of Task Force Hope for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, told a
House committee.

Hitchings' comment was disputed moments later by Ivor L. van Heerden, an LSU
professor in charge of Louisiana's investigation of what happened to the
levees.

"Eighty-seven percent of all water that got into New Orleans was because of
levee breaches," van Heerden told the House Committee on Transportation,
Highways and Public Works.

He suggested that the Corps of Engineers was mostly to blame because the
agency relied on 1959 data and other pitfalls in mapping out worst-case
storm scenarios.

"Design, design, design," van Heerden said of why the levees failed. 

The dispute is a key part of the post-Katrina debate.

Water rising over levees suggests much of the storm damage stemmed from an
act of God that was all but impossible to predict.

Levee breaks fuel arguments that that poorly designed levees are mostly to
blame, which would put the responsibility on the federal government,
including the Corps of Engineers.

The sometimes-tense hearing was held to update lawmakers on a wide range of
levee improvements, repairs in progress and what went wrong when Katrina
struck on Aug. 29.

Hitchings told the committee that, once the federal investigation is over,
it will show that even without the breaches a significant amount of water
would have entered the city because of overtopped levees.

Rep. Tim Burns, R-Mandeville and sponsor of the resolution that triggered
the hearing, sounded incredulous.

Burns asked Hitchings whether he understood Hitchings to say that overtopped
levees accounted for much of the damage rather than levee breaches.

"That's correct," Hitchings replied.

Much of the damage to homes in the Lower 9th Ward stemmed from breaches, he
said. But lots of that flooding would have taken place anyway because of the
overtopping, Hitchings added.

He said the breaches did play a big role in the speed of the destruction.

Van Heerden told a different story. He said homes were knocked off their
foundations in the Lower 9th Ward by a 14-foot surge of water because of
levee breaks. In St. Bernard Parish, 92 percent of the water got in through
levee breaches, the official said.

Van Heerden said the levees ruptured "due to design," including the failure
to properly account for soil conditions. He said the levees that ring the
New Orleans area stem from a 1965 law.

Van Heerden said the corps stuck with 1959 data in deciding how to build
levees despite a 1981 directive to use new hurricane planning data.

"They did not design according to the most severe meteorological conditions
that could occur," he said. Van Heerden said the report by his group, which
is called Team Louisiana, will be turned over to top state officials in two
or three weeks.

Questions and comments directed at Hitchings revealed legislators'
frustration and anger, especially those directly affected by Katrina.

Rep. Nita Hutter, a Republican from Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish, asked
Hitchings whether he knew of any other federal agency, aside from the Corps
of Engineers and war-planning offices, responsible for more than 1,300
deaths, which Hurricane Katrina caused.
"Ms. Hutter, I don't think that is appropriate," said Rep. William Daniel,
D-Baton Rouge, who was serving as committee chairman at the time.

Hitchings told Hutter he did not understand why she would suggest he did not
care about the hurricane deaths.