Did Raspberry Coulis Cause Levee Failures?

Situation normal: all f'd up. That's the best way to describe what engineers and scientists have discovered about the 17th Avenue levee failure.

Baumy said the Corps cannot explain the disparity between what its 1993 design documents show was supposed to be there and what they've found.

The documents indicated that the steel reinforcements in the levee, known as sheet piling, went to a depth of 17.5 feet below sea level. Sonar tests indicated the pilings went only to 10 feet below sea level, meaning the flood wall would have been much weaker than intended.

The LSU team is working on a report for the state that will say there were serious, fundamental design and construction flaws at both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals. Both broke during Hurricane Katrina, flooding much of the city.

The team's leader, Ivor van Heerden, said Wednesday that the levee design ensured failure under the type of water pressure exerted by Katrina's storm surge.

The pilings needed to be driven to a minimum depth of 50 feet below sea level to have the kind of protection needed during a Katrina sized storm.

Who was in charge of the pile driving and did they take short cuts? If they did, they may be held liable for the damage caused by the levee failures.

This was not some natural disaster, but the colossal failure of an engineering system that competent oversight should have caught before it was too late. Did anyone not bother to check to make sure that the piles were properly driven to the correct depth? You mean to tell all the displaced residents of New Orleans 9th Ward who are streaming home for the first time since the end of August that they were flooded out because someone didn't do their job right 10-15 years ago when the plans for the levees were approved and built?

And as if to butress the argument that there was precisely no oversight at the local level, NOLA reports that the levee boards spent more time planning the luncheon buffets than the walkthroughs for the levee system.

When engineers and Orleans Levee Board officials gather twice a year to tour the city's floodwalls, records show that the inspection requires less planning than the day's final event: lunch.

Participants acknowledge that the five-hour survey of the 125-mile levee system amounts to little more than a drive-by. Not so for the post-inspection lunches of crab cake with champagne dill sauce topped off by a dessert of white chocolate mousse with a raspberry coulis.

Nice to know that someone enjoyed their raspberry coulis. We wouldn't want to disrupt their luncheon with the real task of making sure that the levee system was properly built, functioning, and maintained.

In defending the annual inspections last week, Spencer said there are other informal checks of the levee system that take place throughout the year.

"On a daily basis, our people are out in the field cutting the grass, doing work on floodgates, greasing them, that sort of thing," Spencer said. "Most of their supervisors have been here 25 or 30 years, so they know what a good levee looks like and what one with problems looks like. If there's a problem, it's looked into further."

It's become quite apparent that those in charge of the levee system didn't know what problems looked like and that they didn't take the job as seriously as they should. How many lives were lost as a result? Far too many.

And if they know what a good levee looks like, how did any of them not catch the problems with the 17th Street levee? Were they even looking? Or did they figure that since it was built more recently it would be okay for now and someone else would have to deal with the problems if they failed?

In the alternative, if someone at the levee boards did find problems, did they get addressed in a timely and efficient manner. Did someone discover the problems and try to get them fixed? Will the inevitable discovery process (from lawsuits and investigative reporting) determine that the levee boards knew about the problems and did nothing? Or worse - that they buried the evidence of the problems?

All the rebuilding in New Orleans depends on the protection of the levee belt surrounding the city - and if there are deficiencies in the system, it could have catastrophic results. We must hold those responsible for the oversight and management of the levees accountable. And we cannot let the same mistakes be made.

Meanwhile the Lousiana bill to consolidate some of the levee boards saw some shennanigans.

A bill to consolidate several New Orleans area levee boards was shot down, 51-38, in a controversial procedural vote in the state House of Representatives two nights before the recent special legislative session ended. But the official record now shows the final vote as 47-45, as three previously absent members voted to support the measure and four who originally said no changed their votes to yes.

Consolidation is needed to clear the graft and improve the coordination and efficiencies of the levee boards. However, residency limitations preclude anyone with experience being brought in to actually run the levee system. It amounts to little more than adjusting the current patronage.

UPDATE:
Cross listed to the following blogs: Don Surber, The Thief, Brainster, Write Like She Talks, ...how'd i get here, YatPundit (who writes about the merging of the levee boards and about NOLA politics in general), and Michael Williams.

UPDATE:
Added Ace to the list - he thinks the finger points at the ACoE. It's pretty compelling stuff.

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