After the Deluge, Some Questions

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Adams <jadams01 () sprynet com>
Date: October 13, 2005 10:52:23 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP: After the Deluge, Some Questions
Reply-To: John Adams <jadams01 () sprynet com>


Hi, Dave,

     For a few years now, I've been recommending John Barry's  
_Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed  
America_ to everyone I know (including several readers of this list).  
He's got an op-ed in today's NYT that's worthwhile reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/opinion/13barry.html

Here are the two key paragraphs. Note that Barry does not assign  
blame to any particular administration for the failure of these  
levees, although he doesdesignate responsibility for remedying the  
situation squarely on the federal government:

But most of New Orleans was not flooded by water coming directly from  
the Gulf. It was flooded from the north and rear by Lake  
Pontchartrain, when levees failed along the 17th Street and London  
Avenue drainage canals. Initially, the Corps of Engineers said that  
the storm was so great that it overtopped these levees also. But  
after inspecting the levees and reviewing storm data, all three  
investigating teams agree: Hurricane Katrina hit Lake Pontchartrain  
with far less strength than it did the Gulf Coast, and the storm  
surge fell well short of the tops of the levees. In fact, a design or  
construction flaw caused them to collapse in the face of a force they  
were designed to hold. In other words, if the levees had performed as  
they were supposed to, the deaths in New Orleans proper, the scenes  
in the Superdome and the city's devastation would never have taken  
place.

Who is responsible? Many accusations, some of them valid, have been  
hurled at the Orleans Levee Board, a local body. But these  
accusations are irrelevant. The levee board did not design or build  
these levees. That was entirely the responsibility of the federal  
government, through the Corps of Engineers.

After the Deluge, Some Questions

By JOHN M. BARRY
Washington

THE most important questions about rebuilding New Orleans are simple  
ones. Can the city be made safe, and if so, how? Who should chiefly  
bear the burden? Only by answering these questions can the city  
restore the confidence of would-be residents, investors, insurers and  
visitors that a rebuilt New Orleans won't be devastated by another  
hurricane.

Without that public confidence, the city will never be able to  
thrive. But earning it will require two important measures, both of  
which were recommended by the flood control working group I recently  
headed at the request of the Louisiana congressional delegation.  
Clearly, New Orleans needs a new comprehensive flood control plan for  
the future - yet no legislation yet introduced has called for  
developing one. Just as important, we need to understand the failure  
of the city's old levee system, both in order to build a better one  
and in order to apportion responsibility for the losses that New  
Orleans suffered. As it turns out, much of the destruction resulted  
not from an act of god but from human error.

Three teams of credible experts have initiated investigations into  
the failure of the levees. One is from the National Science  
Foundation in conjunction with the American Society of Civil  
Engineers; another, from the United States Army Corps of Engineers;  
and the third is from the State of Louisiana, led by scientists at  
the Louisiana State University hurricane center. Although each  
investigation is independent, the scientists have shared data and  
come to the same surprising preliminary conclusions, one of which has  
enormous ramifications.

We know that Hurricane Katrina made landfall with enormous power,  
devastating the Gulf Coast, and that the levee on the Industrial  
Canal in New Orleans was overtopped by a storm surge coming directly  
from the Gulf of Mexico. When a levee is overtopped, there is  
basically nothing that can be done. Water pouring over a levee long  
enough will, in effect, wash part of the levee away. That's what  
happened on the Industrial Canal, resulting in the flooding of part  
of the Ninth Ward, along with much of St. Bernard and Plaquemines  
Parishes.

But most of New Orleans was not flooded by water coming directly from  
the Gulf. It was flooded from the north and rear by Lake  
Pontchartrain, when levees failed along the 17th Street and London  
Avenue drainage canals. Initially, the Corps of Engineers said that  
the storm was so great that it overtopped these levees also. But  
after inspecting the levees and reviewing storm data, all three  
investigating teams agree: Hurricane Katrina hit Lake Pontchartrain  
with far less strength than it did the Gulf Coast, and the storm  
surge fell well short of the tops of the levees. In fact, a design or  
construction flaw caused them to collapse in the face of a force they  
were designed to hold. In other words, if the levees had performed as  
they were supposed to, the deaths in New Orleans proper, the scenes  
in the Superdome and the city's devastation would never have taken  
place.

Who is responsible? Many accusations, some of them valid, have been  
hurled at the Orleans Levee Board, a local body. But these  
accusations are irrelevant. The levee board did not design or build  
these levees. That was entirely the responsibility of the federal  
government, through the Corps of Engineers.

Just as a surgeon who improperly sutures an artery is responsible if  
the suture ruptures and the patient bleeds to death, the federal  
government is directly responsible for the loss of life and property  
in most of the city. Although people cannot sue the federal  
government as they could sue the surgeon, the government still has a  
moral obligation to repair the damage it caused and to try to make  
the victims' lives whole again.

But instead of helping, Treasury Secretary John Snow recently told  
Congress that the administration would not guarantee the city's  
municipal bonds. So the city government announced the layoff of 3,000  
workers. The Catholic archdiocese will let nearly 900 go. The largest  
employer in the city, Tulane University, may soon have to make  
similar cuts, and Xavier and Dillard universities, also large  
employers, are in even more desperate straits. How does one rebuild a  
city if one destroys its public services and intellectual capital?

It is still less obvious how the city can be rebuilt without a  
comprehensive and credible flood control plan for the future.  
Scientists believe that all of New Orleans, including the Ninth Ward  
and the parishes flooded by the Industrial Canal break, can be  
protected against hurricanes. Plans for that already exist, but in  
the wake of the Hurricane Katrina failures, they need close re- 
examination, both to correct for past mistakes and to account for  
changes the hurricane wrought in the geography of South Louisiana.

The working group I led called for the Corps of Engineers, in concert  
with the National Academies of Science, to develop a thoroughgoing  
new flood control strategy. Coming up with a new plan should not take  
long. The head of the relevant arm of the academies has projected  
that one could be prepared within four to eight months. Work on  
repairs to levees that would certainly be included in any  
comprehensive plan is already under way.

That does not make the need for such a plan any less urgent. Many of  
the rebuilding decisions depend on it. At the same time, the federal  
government needs to take responsibility for first the devastation and  
now the slow strangulation of one of the world's great cities.

In 1927 the homes of roughly one million Americans - then nearly 1  
percent of the American population - were flooded. President Calvin  
Coolidge recognized the responsibility of the federal government to  
fix that problem, and it did. Now New Orleans needs neither rhetoric  
nor "enterprise zones," but concrete and immediate help.

John M. Barry, a visiting scholar at the Tulane-Xavier Center for  
Bioenvironmental Research, is the author of "Rising Tide: The Great  
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America."


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