Merging the Levee Boards - Part 1

There's a lot more to this than simply greed and graft. Da Paper takes a strong stance and insists that we voters hold the feet of lawmakers to the fire on this issue, because the state house of representatives saw fit to shoot down the Boasso bill proposing a unified, levee board.

Let's start with the "facts" Da Paper puts forth in its editorial on the subject:

The existing system of multiple levee boards populated by second-rate political cronies was always a risky approach. Since Katrina, it has become intolerable.

Why does Katrina make multiple levee boards intolerable? No levees broke in either Jefferson or St. Bernard Parishes. In West Jefferson and St. Bernard, 90% of the flooding took place in areas outside the levee protection system. No "super-board" would have fixed that.

The fractured system helped mask serious problems with the maintenance and construction of levees. Tens of thousands of homes are ruined, and more than 1,000 Louisianians are dead because the levees didn't hold back Katrina's floodwaters.

This is an appeal to emotions rather than logical thought. (Not to mention 20/20 hindsight on part of Da Paper.) Tens of thousands of homes were ruined, yes. The majority of St. Bernard Parish was ruined by a 20-25 foot storm surge that hit homes outside the levee protection system. Homes in Arabi were ruined when water from the Industrial Canal breach ran down through the Lower 9th into Arabi. (We'll get to Orleans Parish flooding in a moment.)

In Jefferson Parish, the cause of the majority of flooding is simple: Parish government didn't turn the pumps back on after the storm in a timely manner. Whether Parish President Aaron Broussard did the right thing in evacuating the pump operators to Washington Parish, where they were unable to get back immediately, is something that will be debated in the courts as well as through the process of recalling Broussard from his office. Like West Jefferson and St. Bernard, no levees broke in East Jefferson. Lake Pontchartrain didn't come surging over the levee. The water that flooded my Metairie home and thousands of others came from catch basins backing up and drainage canals erupting like geysers because the rainwater had no place to go.

That leaves Orleans Parish to discuss. The levees broke in the city, at the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal, and the Industrial Canal. The main levee, along Lake Pontchartrain, did not break, and we were lucky that the worst of the storm surge hit much further east, affecting the area from lower St. Bernard to the MS Gulf Coast. The levees along the drainage canals inside the city aren't really levees, they're floodwalls. Those floodwalls were supposed to be anchored in solid ground well below the surface. Tests and studies now coming back show that's not the case.

Da Paper wants you to think that a unified levee board would have somehow done a better job of building levees along the canals. That's simply not the case, and the next graf of their own editorial explains why:

The federal government and its Army Corps of Engineers are responsible for building levees, and they must give us a much stronger flood protection system than we had Aug. 29. But we also must make sure that South Louisiana manages those levees in a rational, vigilant and professional manner.

How does one "manage those levees?" Once a levee is built, it sits there. The agency in charge of "management" makes sure that the grass stays cut. They provide security patrols to make sure nothing is vandalized and no other crime occurs on the levees. They hire engineers to monitor and evaluate the work done by the Corps of Engineers. The levee boards don't even make the final decisions on construction in or near a levee; the Corps does that.

But what happens when the Army Corps of Engineers screws up? Even a unified levee board would be subordinate to the Corps in terms of flood protection planning. From Da Paper's front page this morning:

17th Street Canal levee was doomed Report blames corps: Soil could never hold

The floodwall on the 17th Street Canal levee was destined to fail long before it reached its maximum design load of 14 feet of water because the Army Corps of Engineers underestimated the weak soil layers 10 to 25 feet below the levee, the state's forensic levee investigation team concluded in a report to be released this week.

That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they "could not fathom" how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.

The failure of the wall and other breaches in the city's levee system flooded much of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore Aug. 29, prompting investigations that have raised questions about the basic design and construction of the floodwalls.

Advocates of changing the system argue that a unified levee board would provide better supervision. Not so, because they would rely on the Corps' evaluation of the work. Again, from this morning's article:

Private-sector engineering work must be reviewed by corps personnel in relevant sections. In this case, legal documents show, the work was reviewed by engineers in the corps' geotechnical and structural engineering branches, as well as the flood control structures section. It was approved and accepted by the district's chief engineer at the time, Chester Ashley, according to the documents.

Levee boards rely on the Corps' expertise, and that's what let us down. We don't need a unified levee board to tell us that we can no longer trust the civil engineering "expertise" of the Corp of Engineers.

We'll discuss the real reasons politicians want a unified levee board in part 2.

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