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New Orleans Repeating Deadly Mistakes Of Its Past

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The Associated Press

Published: August 24, 2008

NEW ORLEANS - Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten what happened after Hurricane Betsy caused catastrophic flooding four decades ago and again think the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed that many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."

Geneva Stanford, a 76-year-old health care worker, is one of those believers. She lives in a trim and tidy prefabricated house in the Lower 9th Ward, 200 feet from a flood wall replacing one that Katrina broke.

"This wall here wasn't there when we had the flood," Stanford said. "When I look at it now, I say maybe if we had had it up it there then, maybe we wouldn't have flooded."

She's not alone. A recent University of New Orleans survey of residents found concern about levee safety was dropping off the list of top worries.

This sense of security, though, may be dangerously naive.

For the foreseeable future, New Orleans will be shielded by levees unable to protect against another storm like Katrina.

When and if the Army Corps of Engineers finishes $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work, the city will have limited protection - what are defined as 100-year levees.

This does not mean they'd stand up to storms for a century. Under the 100-year standard, experts say that every house being rebuilt in New Orleans has a 26 percent chance of being flooded again during a 30-year mortgage; and every child born in New Orleans would have nearly a 60 percent chance of seeing a major flood in his or her life.

The corps says its work is making the city safer, but there are serious doubts.

Bumps On Road To Recovery

Independent experts have questioned the ability of the corps to do the job right.

On the road to recovery, the agency has installed faulty drainage pumps, used outdated measurements, issued incorrect data, unearthed critical flaws, made conflicting statements about flood risk and flunked reviews by the National Research Council.

At the same time, the corps has run into funding problems, lawsuits, a tangle of local interests and engineering difficulties.

An initial September 2010 target to complete the $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work has slipped to mid-2011. Then last September, an Army audit found 84 percent of work was behind schedule. The report added that costs would likely soar.

A more recent analysis shows the start of 84 of 156 projects was delayed - 15 of them by six months or more. Meanwhile, a critical analysis of what it would take to build even stronger protection - 500-year levees - was supposed to be done last December but remains unfinished.

Publicly, the corps says the work is on budget and will be done by 2011.

Al Naomi, a corps branch chief who's worked for the past 37 years in New Orleans, said he was upbeat because Congress has shown a willingness to fund the work. In addition, he said, enough elements are coming together to make him "cautiously optimistic" the work will stay on track.

Doubts, though, weigh on those familiar with the game plan.

"It's almost one of those proverbial 'you can't get there from where we are' situations," said Gerald Spohrer, executive director of the West Jefferson levee district. The deadline, he said, is "overly optimistic."

Bringing Back Bad Memories

The trouble so far stirs up bad memories: Of the four decades of excruciatingly slow levee building after Betsy struck in 1965.

Betsy was eerily similar to Katrina. The levees broke. Water reached rooftops and people clung to trees for survival.

In Betsy's aftermath, President Lyndon B. Johnson - like President Bush - pledged to rebuild New Orleans and make it safe from hurricanes. Little more than a month after the storm, Congress gave the corps $85 million to build a Category 3 hurricane levee system.

By 1976, though, the Government Accountability Office found the completion date for the work had slipped 13 years, from 1978 to 1991. Costs had soared to $352 million. By 1982, the GAO found that the project's cost had increased to $757 million and the agency said the work would not get done by 2008.

Katrina's storm surge laid bare the inadequate work.

Can this sort of history repeat itself? Some see the same instincts playing out in rebuilding across the area.

One such problem is the tendency of policymakers to encourage development in risky areas. Joe Sullivan, the 82-year-old city engineer who's overseen the New Orleans drainage and water department for nearly a half century, has seen it happen before.

"We keep building in holes, and contractors keep trying to move in and take advantage of a situation: They come in with a bunch of contractors, sell off property in low places, take their money and run," Sullivan said.

He runs his finger across a city drainage map. On it, green indicates low-lying terrain, and green is everywhere.

"You see that green spot up there? That's below sea level, well below sea level," he said. "There's some people going to have dinner tonight out there in New Orleans east, they're walking on the floor inside their house at 13 feet below sea level."

Naomi, the Corps of Engineers veteran, said his agency was candid about telling people the risk they face.

"We're in the job of risk reduction, not risk elimination," he said. "Strictly relying on levees alone should not give anyone the impression they are risk free. I think that would be a horrible mistake to make."

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