Getting to the Bottom of the Levees

The Army Corps of Engineers has pulled some of the sheet piles from the 17th Street Canal, which was the site of the breach that caused one of the most significant flooding episodes in Katrina's aftermath.

The results are somewhat surprising considering what engineers had determined based on sonar findings:

Four sections of metal sheet pilings pulled Tuesday morning from both sides of the breach in the 17th Street Canal levee wall were all found to be more than 23 feet, 6 inches long, exactly as called for in design documents, Army Corps of Engineers officials said.

The pilings had been sunk to a depth of 17 feet below sea level, also meeting design specifications for the canal, said Col. Lewis Setliff III, commander of the corps' Task Force Guardian, which is which is in charge of the rebuilding the levees that were broken during Hurricane Katrina.

The depth of the pilings, which support floodwalls on the canal, had been questioned by independent engineers, who noted that sonar soundings taken elsewhere on the levees showed them going only about 10 feet below sea level. The engineers also had questioned whether even 17 feet below sea level would be deep enough to stop seepage below the canal bottom, which is blamed for causing the collapse of some walls.

It would seem that the failures are more complex than first thought, though the possibility that the failure was based on the design, and not the execution. The failures still do not exclude the possibility that the design itself was deficient, or that there were other sections of the sheet piling that weren't driven to the proper depth or were the wrong size. However, these samples seem to rule the latter two possiblities out. And as Paul of Wizbang notes, this moves the onus onto the Army Corps, because the possibility that the contractors screwed up is quickly being removed from the table. We're being left with a flawed design from the inception. However, there's still the possibility that the fill material used by the contractors wasn't up to spec, which means that the contractors could still be on the hook.

Meanwhile, Senate Bill 95 was defeated, which means that consolidation efforts will wait til the new session.

"I think the ideal thing would be to abolish all levee districts with one swoop and start over," the first-term Republican senator from Arabi told about 100 people attending the first membership meeting of Citizens for a Safer Jefferson. "If we don't have something that protects everyone, I don't think that's fair."

Although Boasso's original bill called for management by a regional board, it also would have required that millages dedicated to levee maintenance be spent in the districts where they were generated. But Boasso told the meeting that even that sacred cows may need to be slain if southeast Louisiana is to have adequate levee protection for the entire region.

Oh, and that vote that was supposed to take place in February? Well, there are now lawsuits to make sure that it goes on as scheduled, as opposed to having the politicians delay it for as long as possible.