[StBernard] Vast Defenses Now Shielding New Orleans

[Westley Annis]

Vast Defenses Now Shielding New Orleans
 
Jennifer Zdon for The New York Times
A streamlined process for obtaining environmental permits helped speed work
on the system.
Nearly seven years after flood waters from Hurricane Katrina gushed over New
Orleans, $14.5 billion worth of civil works designed to block such surges is
now in place - a 133-mile chain of levees, flood walls, gates and pumps too
vast to take in at once, except perhaps from space.

Individual components of the system can be appreciated from a less celestial
elevation. At the new Seabrook floodgate complex, climb up three steep
ladders, open a trap door, and step out into the blazing sunlight atop a
54-foot tower that was not here just two years ago. From there one looks out
over a $165 million barrier across the shipping canal that links Lake
Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

Two "lift gates," 50 feet across, can be lowered to block the waters of Lake
Pontchartrain. A navigation gate 95 feet wide, whose curved sides weigh 220
tons apiece, can be swung gently but mightily into place. When open - which
will be most of the time - the gates will allow easy boat traffic.

When a storm threatens, however, they will seal off the canal from the kind
of surge that devastated the Lower Ninth Ward in Katrina.

Yet all that seems puny in comparison to the two-mile "Great Wall" that can
seal off the channel from Lake Borgne to the east, or the billion-dollar
west closure complex, which features the biggest pumping station on the
planet.

Now, hurricane season has returned, as it does each June. Whatever storms
might approach New Orleans this year or in the future, they will encounter a
vastly upgraded ring of protection. The question is whether it will be
enough.

When Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the city's hurricane protection system
became a symbol of America's haphazard approach to critical infrastructure.
The patchwork of walls and levees built over the course of 40 years was
still far from complete when the storm came, and even the Army Corps of
Engineers admitted that this was "a system in name only." Flood walls
collapsed, and earthen levees built from sandy, dredged soils melted away.

What has emerged since could come to symbolize the opposite: a vast civil
works project that gives every appearance of strength and permanence. No
other American city has anything like it. "This is the best system the
greater New Orleans area has ever had," said Col. Edward R. Fleming, the
commander of the New Orleans district of the corps.

Marc Walraven, a district head in the Dutch ministry of transport, public
works and water management, recently toured the defenses. While 100 percent
safety is impossible, he said, and challenges in operations and maintenance
can be expected as the corps passes the facilities over to local management
in the coming year, "the constructions that have been built are in my
opinion adequate to defend New Orleans."

Tim Doody, the president of the levee board that oversees Orleans and St.
Bernard Parishes, disagrees. While the construction appears to be strong, he
said, the level of protection authorized by Congress for the corps to build
is "woefully inadequate."

The new system was designed and constructed to provide what is informally
known as 100-year protection, which means it was built to prevent the kind
of flooding that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year. That
standard is used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine
whether homeowners and businesses must buy flood insurance to qualify for
federally regulated or insured mortgages.

But New Orleans has seen storms far more damaging than the 100-year
standard. Katrina is generally considered to have been a 400-year storm, and
rising seas and more numerous hurricanes predicted in many climate-change
models suggest harsher conditions to come.

"It's what the country will pay for; it's what FEMA insures for," Mr. Doody
said. "But our thought and belief is that we all need to be behind
protection that's greater than that."

Still, corps officials insist, the new system has been designed with far
greater strength and resiliency than anything that went before it. While a
major storm could lead to street flooding - something New Orleans, much of
which is below sea level, sees even with heavy rainfall - the kind of
catastrophic, explosive wall of water resulting from the failure of sections
of flood wall and the dissolution of poorly-built levees that devastated so
much of the city after Katrina should not occur again, they say.

Moreover, newly storm-proofed pumps can drain off the flooding with relative
speed. Colonel Fleming said he believed that the armoring built in means
"the system will be resilient up to the 500-year storm."

As for the often contentious relationship between the corps and community
groups like the levee boards, the rising network of protective structures is
helping to calm tensions, Colonel Fleming said. "I don't want to portray
this that we're sitting around singing 'Kumbaya,' " he said, "but we're not
yelling and screaming."

Overall construction started in 2006, and while some work is still going on,
the projects are substantially complete and functional for this hurricane
season.

Even many in the corps seem astonished by the speed of the work; projects of
this magnitude would normally take decades to construct, said Kevin G.
Wagner, a senior project manager with the agency. Looking out toward the
billion-dollar pumping station and gates at the west closure complex, he
said, "It's truly amazing, starting in 2009, to be where we are today."

To speed up the process, the corps used a streamlined process for getting
environmental permits and urged contractors to work their projects in
parallel - for example, beginning construction on the foundations of some
structures before the final designs for the walls, gates and buildings were
complete.

More important, Congress voted the $14.5 billion -nearly three times the
annual civil works budget for the agency - up front instead of the usual
incremental dribbling out of appropriations. "Full funding of the program
gave us lots of flexibility," said Michael F. Park, the chief of Task Force
Hope, the special corps entity created to oversee the projects.

Mr. Wagner, who lost his home as did other family members in Katrina, said
with chagrin, "It feels terrible to say, but it takes a disaster to get that
kind of funding."

Building greater than 100-year protection might not be simply a matter of
building walls ever higher. It will also come from restoring the coastal
environment that slows and buffers storms and their surge. It means
restoring wetlands that have been rapidly disappearing, and perhaps creating
barrier islands to act as speed bumps for storms.

But Katrina did not just leave a soaked and despoiled city; it left a
residue of mistrust of the corps. When asked whether he thought the new
hurricane structures would be effective, Jasen Seymour, a 19-year-old who
was bowfishing with a friend near the 17th Street Canal, said "If the Army
Corps of Engineers has anything to do with it, it's not going to be strong."

Still, some residents demonstrate their faith in the future simply by not
leaving. Artie Folse, who rebuilt his home after Katrina and lives just a
few blocks from the site of the breach of the 17th Street Canal that
inundated his Lakeview neighborhood, said: "The fact of the matter is, I
still live here. That pretty much says it all."