[StBernard] Scientists say Corps of Engineers endangered New Orleans' future

[Westley Annis]

Scientists say Corps of Engineers endangered New Orleans' future
The group failed to quickly close a channel blamed for heavy Katrina
flooding, they say


By CAIN BURDEAU
Associated Press 

NEW ORLEANS - A group of scientists on Thursday accused the Army Corps of
Engineers of endangering this city's future by failing to take steps to
immediately close a shipping channel blamed for widespread flooding during
Hurricane Katrina.

The rebuke was aimed at a preliminary report the Corps sent Congress on Dec.
15, urging it to close the 76-mile Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet but
stopping short of saying when.

Locals have dubbed the channel a "hurricane highway" because it has been
blamed for funneling storm surge into the city.

The Corps' report denied that the channel contributed to the flooding of the
Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. The Corps says storm surge modeling
shows that the channel did not act as a funnel.

Those statements have baffled, and exasperated, many residents and
scientists.

"The Corps has been working on this channel for 54 years, and they have egg
on their face and it's hard to admit," said Mark Madary, a St. Bernard
Parish councilman who appeared with the scientists at Thursday's news
conference.

The channel is "a ticking time bomb in the heart of Orleans and St. Bernard
Parishes," the scientists said in a letter to House Speaker-designate Nan-
cy Pelosi and incoming-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

The scientists called for building storm barriers to keep storms' waves from
entering this network of canals that they call "the funnel." They also said
the Corps report omitted detailing ways to rebuild marsh and swamp forests
ruined by the channel, which is known, from its initials, as the "Mr. Go."

G. Paul Kemp, a Louisiana State University engineer and one of several
forensic engineers examining what caused the flooding during Katrina, said
the Corps' modeling mistakenly excludes a six-mile stretch where the canal
merges with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to explain how the channel did
not cause the flooding.

The combined waterway travels through eastern New Orleans and joins the
Mississippi River near the Lower 9th Ward, the neighborhood that saw the
worst Katrina flooding.

Besides Kemp, two other LSU professors - Ivor van Heerden, a levee expert
and author of a book on the levee failures during Katrina, and John Day, a
coastal scientist - signed the letter.