[StBernard] Safety must come first, panel urges

[Westley Annis]

Safety must come first, panel urges
Levees 'urgent call to action' presented 

Saturday, August 26, 2006
By Sheila Grissett
East Jefferson bureau 
Public safety must trump all other concerns -- economic, environmental or
political -- if the region is to survive the next Hurricane Katrina-type
storm, warns an independent engineering panel advising the government on how
to repair and strengthen the system. 

"There were flaws in the way the system was conceived, budgeted, funded,
designed, constructed, managed and operated . . . and we did not make safety
the No. 1 priority in New Orleans," David Daniel said Friday, releasing a
10-point "urgent call to action" from the American Society of Civil
Engineers. 

"Compromises were made based on cost, land use, environmental issues and
other conflicting priorities. Protection of public safety was not always the
outcome of these," said Daniel, the University of Texas president who chairs
the engineering group's Katrina investigatory panel. 

"There are serious deficiencies that must be corrected to avoid another
Hurricane Katrina tragedy," he said. 

The authors said that enacting their recommendations, which refine and wrap
up points the panel has made periodically as its investigation progressed
during the past nine months, will require the corps, Congress, state
government, local elected officials and the public to make major shifts in
their thinking about, and approach to, hurricane protection and flood
control. 

"There was far too little priority or urgency given to the hurricane
protection system by its designers, operators, political leaders at all
levels of government, and the people who lived in its shadow," Daniel said. 

Although the group's final report isn't expected until late September,
members said their recommendations are being released now because
implementation is essential for overcoming deficiencies in the system and
instituting "real change" in the way the hurricane protection system is
governed, managed and engineered. 


Single manager 

The 10 points in the report address subjects the group has addressed
periodically during its review of how and why the system succumbed to such
wide-ranging, catastrophic failure when Hurricane Katrina hurtled just east
of New Orleans on Aug. 29. 

Noting "failures on almost every level," the recommendations range from
using independent outside experts to help assess all Corps of Engineer
projects to appointing a single engineer -- selected by and accountable to
the governor -- to manage all critical hurricane and flood protection
systems in the region. 

"This won't be easy, but until someone is put in charge and made accountable
. . . we're telling you that organizational dysfunction and chaos will
continue," Daniel said, citing the historic lack of coordination among all
agencies and the piecemeal fashion that the system has been built -- but not
finished -- during the last 40 years. 

The panel supports the new state initiative that would reduce multiple
southeast Louisiana levee districts to two, one to represent the
Pontchartrain Basin and one for the Barataria Basin, a consolidation plan
that must be approved by voters this fall to become law. 

But the civil engineers caution that it is only a beginning. 

"The only practical way to overcome this organizational confusion is to
implement strong, sustainable mechanisms for communication, cooperation and
coordination," the report says. "We envision that the commissioner will be
able to provide overall direction and make sure that all parties are working
together." 


Identifying risks 

The panel also encourages the corps to complete as quickly as possible a
mammoth assessment that will identify how much risk different storms,
combined with different variables -- including overtopping or another breach
-- pose to specific areas of the region. 

"You can't communicate the degree of risk to folks if you don't know how
much risk there is," said Bill Marcuson, newly elected president of the
American Society of Civil Engineers who retired from the corps in 2000 after
serving as director of the agency's Geotechnical Laboratory. 

"Completing this work must remain a very high priority," the report says.
"Only then can fully informed decisions be made regarding the future of the
region." 

The group gave the corps high marks for some of the changes it has already
made, new initiatives under way -- including the risk assessment due this
fall -- and other changes the agency has committed to making, including the
use of independent peer review of all major construction projects. 


'Two of 10 steps taken' 

"There is no quick fix for the complexity of problems," Daniels said. "We
need to recognize that it will take time, money and serious change . . . and
we've taken only about two of the 10 steps." 

The 14-member investigatory panel was formed nine months ago at the request
of corps chief Gen. Carl Strock, who asked the group to work in
collaboration with the corps' own Interagency Performance Evaluation Task
Force, which pulled together more than 150 engineers and scientists from
private industry, academia, the corps and other governmental agencies to
investigate the 50-plus catastrophic system failures that occurred during
Katrina. 

And while the Katrina catastrophe triggered the work, Daniel said lessons
learned should prompt an overhaul of levee systems and other life-sustaining
structures and management systems throughout the United States. 

"We must place the protection of public safety, health and welfare at the
forefront of our nation's priorities," he said. 

. . . . . . . 

Sheila Grissett can be reached at sgrissett at timespicayune.com or (504)
826-3300.