[StBernard] St. Bernard residents question status of levees

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard residents question status of levees
by Chrs Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
Monday May 11, 2009, 10:20 PM
As the Corps of Engineers wraps up designs for a nearly 30-mile ring of
concrete walls and floodgates to protect St. Bernard Parish, corps
representatives got an earful of questions Monday night from flood-weary
residents wondering where they stand now.


All levee improvements meant to protect the New Orleans area from a
hurricane with a 1 percent chance of occurrence in any year are scheduled to
be completed in 2011, but construction hasn't begun on any of the Chalmette
loop levee system.

Levee upgrades meant to protect St. Bernard from a so-called 100-year storm
will involve earthen levees capped with concrete T-walls for a total height
of between 29 and 31 feet. The ring will extend along the shoreline of the
Mississippi River Gulf Outlet from Bayou Bienvenue, east of where Paris Road
crosses the Intracoastal Waterway, down to Verret and then back west to meet
the Mississippi River at Caernarvon, near the border of Plaquemines Parish.

Although construction on the concrete walls hasn't started, Chris Gilmore, a
senior corps project manager for St. Bernard, said levee upgrades so far
have raised the ring levee to 20 feet high.

"That's higher than they've ever been in St. Bernard Parish, " he said.

But resident John Gallo disputed that interpretation, saying a series of
utility pipelines across the old levee have not yet been removed, leaving
gaps in the new earthen flood barriers.

"You have a problem right now and I think it should be addressed now, "
Gallo said. "Don't tell these folks that levee's complete because that levee
is not complete."

Gilmore said temporary metal frames known as Hesco baskets will fill in
those gaps until the pipelines are removed.

Resident Lloyd Serigne pushed Col. Michael McCormick, the outgoing head of
the corps' Hurricane Protection Office, on exactly how high a storm surge
the current levees could take.

"You can't tell me if we have a 10-foot surge, if the levees are not gonna
protect us?" Serigne asked after McCormick and Gilmore skirted exact
responses to similar questions earlier in the evening. "That's what we want
to know."

"Right now I would recommend you evacuate, " McCormick answered.

"I'm not saying evacuation, " Serigne fired back. "We know were gonna
evacuate if a storm comes, were gonna get out of here, but you're not
answering the question."

Several times during the night McCormick interjected when Gilmore referred
to "hurricane protection, " correcting it to "risk reduction."

Resident Jeanne Lagarde picked up on the distinction.

"I've noticed just recently that terminology is out the window, " she said.

"Words matter, and I will tell you that before we had 'hurricane protection'
in our lexicon of terms, we had things called 'flood control, ' " he said.
"There's a sense of some hubris that mankind, that engineers can actually
control mother nature, as in control flooding. . . We call it flood risk
management now."

. . . . . . .

Chris Kirkham can be reached at ckirkham at timespicayune.com or 504.826.3321.