N.O. Levees Swamped With Criticism
Study: City's Levee System Is Inadequate; Overhaul Of Agencies Needed
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Play CBS Video Video Katrina's Manmade Failures If a new investigation by a team of academics is correct, a lot of the damage from Hurricane Katrina was the result of human error and neglect. Byron Pitts has more.
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Video Levees Study; Hurricane Report With days to go before the official start of the hurricane season, experts released their forecast predictions on the same day a new study on New Orleans levees came out. Susan Roberts reports.
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Video Dire Hurricane Predictions The government will release its national hurricane forecast today, and predictions are dire. Mark Strassmann reports that there's no real break from last year's storms.
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Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina flow over a levee along the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal in New Orleans. Aug. 30, 2005. (AP Photo)
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Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., shakes hands with Army Corps of Engineers structural engineer Fred Young far right, near the break of the 17th Street canal levee in the Lakeview area of New Orleans on March 10, 2006. (AP)
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Work continues to repair the Industrial Canal levee in New Orleans on Sept. 25, 2005, following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. (AP)
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Interactive Storm Season Track the latest storms, see how they form, get preparation tips and more.
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Special Report Gulf Coast Disaster Complete coverage of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, including anniversary coverage.
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Interactive After The Storm The road to recovery for the people and places along the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast.
The report also called for an overhaul of the agencies that oversee flood protection. It took aim at Congress for its piecemeal funding over the past 50 years, and at state and local levee authorities for failing to properly oversee maintenance of the levees.
"You tend to get what you pay for," Dave Rogers, a member of the team of academics who extensively studied the system, said during a news conference on Monday.
The study was performed by the Independent Levee Investigation Team, led by the University of California, Berkeley. The group has been highly critical of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was in charge of designing and building the complicated system.
The study released Monday said floods overwhelmed levees and flood walls, both on the fringes and inside the city. Breaches were caused by weak soil in the levees, poor engineering and breakdowns in sections where different types of flood protection meet. CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts reports that in several places along the 350-mile levee system, the Corps used cheap material — sand instead of clay. According to investigators, the foundation for the levee walls were in some places just 13 feet deep — they should have been 60.
Pitts reports the culture at the Corps of Engineers changed in the past 40 years. Budget cuts and infighting between local politicians led to deadly inefficiency.
"We took the engineering out of the Corps of Engineers, and that's in an attempt to become better, faster, cheaper project managers," said Bob Bea, a former engineer with the Corps who worked on the investigation team.
As CBS News' Steve Futtermann reports, the findings dispute most of the corps' preliminary findings about what caused the levee breaches, saying the investigators had made critical errors in their analysis, as the Los Angeles Times notes.
The Corps of Engineers has been working to repair and upgrade the levee system before the June 1 start of the
Raymond Seed, a member of the study team, said Monday that engineers must pay attention to other spots in the system that may fail if another hurricane hits New Orleans.
"The next weakest link is the one you have to be worried about," Seed said.
While the corps is trying to upgrade the levee system, it is installing huge flood gates at key points to prevent the type of Katrina-like storm surge that entered canals and overtopped and breached levees, leading to the flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans and of surrounding areas.
A wide range of design and construction defects in levees around New Orleans raise serious concerns about whether the system can withstand the pounding of another hurricane the size of Katrina, even after $3.1 billion in repairs are completed, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The newspaper reports that these findings — laid out in a 600-page report — undermine assurances by both the Bush administration and the Corps of Engineers that the federal levee repair program will provide a higher level of protection to New Orleans.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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