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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Moving earth, bureaucracy, Army begins levee repairs


Repairs continue on a large section where the levee broke during Hurricane Katrina in the lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans on Friday. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Ralph Vartabedian and Stephen Braun Los Angeles Times

In a race against next year’s hurricane season, the Army Corps of Engineers this week began one of the largest and most urgent programs to rebuild New Orleans: repairing a levee system left devastated by Hurricane Katrina in late August.

Surveys of the damage indicate that about 50 miles of levees and storm walls were either destroyed or heavily damaged, requiring repairs that will cost an estimated $400 million over the next eight months, according to internal Army estimates.

Within weeks, the Army hopes to have dozens of contracts issued for the work, mobilizing teams of local and national contractors. The job will require moving 3 million cubic yards of dirt, enough to build a mound 1,575 feet high covering an entire football field.

If successful, the crash program will restore a measure of hurricane protection to the region, but will still fall short of the defense needed against storms as big or bigger than Katrina.

Army officials say any effort to quickly erect bigger levees and storm walls is well beyond the scope of what can be accomplished before the start of the 2006 hurricane season next June and they have no authority to build a better system.

“We are constrained by time,” said Col. Lewis Setliff, who is directing the effort.

State and local officials, who have sharply criticized the federal response to the disaster, say they want the levees rebuilt as quickly as possible, but expect the Army to do more than simply rebuild broken floodwalls.

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, the state agency that handles flood protection, wants the Army corps to complete floodwall projects planned for Lake Pontchartrain but which had not been completed when Katrina struck, Cleo Allen, an agency spokeswoman, said Friday.

“Because of (soil) subsidence and other issues, some of the projects were not complete to begin with,” Allen said. “Our position is we would like to see the damaged areas repaired and the levees completed to their authorized level of protection. Once that’s done, we are hoping to focus on protecting against a Category 5 storm,” in which winds exceed 155 mph.

There are currently three separate investigations – by the Army corps, National Science Foundation and American Society of Civil Engineers – into why the levees failed. The results of those investigations are expected in the weeks and months ahead.

Setliff said he anticipates nearly all of about 45 contracts to rebuild the levees will be issued by the end of October. About 15 percent of the money will be set aside for small local contractors, who in many cases are more experienced in levee work, he added.

So far, the Army is not even sure why levees and storm walls failed.

The three investigating teams are still examining the breaches and reviewing engineering records, but they have not yet reached any conclusions about possible defects. At least some of the levees failed because Katrina was simply bigger than the levees were designed to handle, investigators say.

Katrina washed out about 15 percent of the region’s 350 miles of levees and caused five breaches in concrete storm walls in New Orleans – one of the main causes of flooding within the city. But the broader damage to earthen levees outside the city also contributed to flooding and to massive devastation to communities south of New Orleans, along the Mississippi River delta.

In some cases, the levee failures weakened the soil so much that new levees and walls will require stronger foundations. That will mean installing footing with wider bases, known as T-walls, said Stevan Spencer, the chief engineer for the Orleans Levee District.

“That should alleviate the stability failures – at least for a Category 3 storm,” Spencer said, referring to a storm with winds of 111 mph to 130 mph.