When the Levee Breaks Again

Some of the most celebrated levee repairs by the Army Corps of Engineers after Hurricane Katrina are already showing signs of serious flaws, a leading critic of the corps says.

The critic, Robert G. Bea, a professor of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said he encountered several areas of concern on a tour in March.

The most troubling, Dr. Bea said, was erosion on a levee by the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a navigation canal that helped channel water into New Orleans during the storm.

Breaches in that 13-mile levee devastated communities in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, and the rapid reconstruction of the barrier was hailed as one of the corps’ most significant rebuilding achievements in the months after the storm.

Breaches in that 13-mile levee devastated communities in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, and the rapid reconstruction of the barrier was hailed as one of the corps’ most significant rebuilding achievements in the months after the storm.

But Dr. Bea, an author of a blistering 2006 report on the levee failures paid for by the National Science Foundation, said erosion furrows, or rills, suggest that “the risks are still high.” Heavy storms, he said, may cause “tear-on-the-dotted-line levees.”

So, hundreds of millions were spent on repairs and the work done shows signs that it may yet fail again. It's a really good question as to whether the repaired levees are any better than the ones that failed in the aftermath of Katrina. There are still gaps in the levee system, repairs may have been incomplete, and the work could be undone by another glancing blow from a hurricane.

While the Army Corps of Engineers has done quite a bit of restoration and improvement to the levee system, the problems with the rebuilt system could just as quickly cause systemic failures as the old levee system. Making substantive improvements to the levees, including armoring the levees to prevent erosion, would provide improved security to residents who rely on the levees for protection against flood damage.