Katrina-Battered New Orleans Levee Leaking

Experts Point To Seepage, Say Repaired 17th Street Canal Could Fail Again In Storm

(AP)  Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses.

Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.

The Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011. Some outside experts said the leak could mean that billions more will be needed and that some of the work already completed may need to be redone.

"It is all based on a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking, and it means that when they wake up to this one - really - our cost is going to increase significantly," said Bob Bea, a civil engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Army Corps of Engineers disputed the experts' dire assessment. The agency said it is taking the risk of seepage into account and rebuilding the levees with an adequate margin of safety.

"It's always a potential, so it is a design component for every feature," said Walter Baumy, the chief corps engineer in New Orleans.

The 17th Street Canal floodwall collapsed on the day Katrina surged over New Orleans in August 2005, and the failure severely damaged Lakeview. It was one of the biggest of about 50 levee breaches that contributed to the deaths of about 1,300 people.

Fixing the 17th Street Canal has been one of the most expensive and laborious repair jobs since the storm and has served as something of a test case for scientists and engineers, who plan to apply the lessons learned there to the city's other levees.

Among other things, they repaired the wall by driving interlocking sheets of steel 60 feet into the ground, compared with about 17 feet before the storm. The sheet metal is supposed to prevent canal water from seeping under the levee through the wet, toothpaste-like soil that lies beneath the city, which was built on reclaimed swamp and filled-in marsh.

Over the past few months, however, the corps found evidence that canal water is seeping through the joints in the sheet metal and then rising to the surface on the other side of the levee, forming puddles and other wet spots.

Engineers said the boggy ground is a more serious problem than the corps realizes. Bea said there is a roughly 40 percent chance of the 17th Street Canal levee collapsing if water rises higher than 6 feet above sea level. During Katrina, the water reached 7 feet in the canal.

John Schmertmann, a retired University of Florida professor and a consultant on foundations, agreed with Bea that the corps "may still be embedding some of these not-properly-considered factors, so the new walls may not do what the corps expects."

Reducing such seepage might require the driving of sheet metal far deeper into the ground than is done now, or some other solution, said Bea, who was part of a team of experts sent by the National Science Foundation to do an independent study of the levee failures during Katrina.

Donald Jolissaint, chief of the corps' technical support branch in New Orleans, denied the problem at the 17th Street Canal is serious.

"I personally do not at all believe that this little wet spot is anything that is going to cause a breach or a failure of any kind," he said. A newly installed floodgate could be used to cut off the flow of water into the canal and reduce pressure on the levee, he said.

Nevertheless, the corps is concerned enough that for weeks, workers have been analyzing the wet spots and digging a 160-foot-long, 10-foot-deep trench to zero in on the source. "We're doing everything we can to chase this down," Jolissaint said.

The corps is also spending about $100 million by taking more than 2,000 soil borings to find out what is under the ground and determine the best design.

Timothy Kusky, a geologist with Saint Louis University and an expert on the Mississippi River, said engineering a safe levee system in New Orleans will be very difficult because of the soil.

"You've got old riverbeds and floodplain deposits all interlayered and distributed laterally in a very complex way, and then you build a levee across them," Kusky said.

As a result, a levee sinks at different rates, and the sinking creates "little cracks in them that promote seepage, and also the old river channels and floodplain deposits have different potentials for underseepage," he said.

He said the corps understands a lot of the problems, but it takes a huge amount of data to map every weakness, and the agency does not have the manpower to see that every contractor is doing the job right.

Seepage was reported at the 17th Street Canal before Katrina. The corps denies that caused the collapse. Instead, the corps contends the floodwall flexed and finally cracked under the force of water piled against it by the storm.

[iloveno4eva]

Idiots....complete idiots some of you are. All your hearsay information- all the arguments you have over hearsay. Having opinions when you shouldn''t...let your home town be f*cked up and let us all sit and read what you have to say then you little twits.

[gopack443]

"Too all those who say that N.O. should not be rebuilt, do we do that for all the cities in America that continue to flood or get hit by tornadoes or have forest fires."
Posted by kellie97


Them city forest fires are the worst!
No wonder people in new orleans are to stupid to leave when a hurricane is coming!

[gopack443]

"Too all those who say that N.O. should not be rebuilt, do we do that for all the cities in America that continue to flood or get hit by tornadoes or have forest fires."
Posted by kellie97


Them city forest fires are the worst!
No wonder people in new orleans are to stupid to leave when a hurricane is coming!

[gopack443]

When the hurricanes where headed to N.O. the people there had all the time in the world to get out and go to higher ground. But didn''t! Now they have even more time to know that the levee is going to break and they need to get above sea level. I assume they will respond by sitting on there hands and wondering why no one feel sorry for them.
Time to stop wasting money on that city and let it go back to swamp!

[keithle1]

"Mushy ground"? New Orleans? Wha---? I never knew this. Why was this kept a secret?

Every hurricane season New Orleans has to pray desperately to The Supreme Being that the big one (or even the medium one) doesn''t hit again.

[frankbowers]

What is so sad here is not the Engineering as it is the best ion the world it is the cheap contractors who pocket the money and throw a little cement at the problem and it in not the hey duty tyupe but the 2 sack crete you can get at homedeopt for 2.19 for a 60 # sack until the Congress require stress test are accurate it will continue. This work is being done likd huey nLong did for hightway 171 running north from Lake charles to Shreveport which was breaking down before the cars hit it in the 40''s. Do not blame the engineering it is the product thast the contractors are using and the method of instalation which is done on the cheap side although high charges the most was done by illegal aliens in the end and do not forget they could care less as long as they can send the money eqarned to mexico rather paing our US Taxes. Frank Bowers of Leesville, La and i remember the Longs. Who were the best that run in that day.

[alanscouten]

Our construction standards are so low in this country that a Holland, for instance, would never accept the design standards foisted on loser-americans by winner-americans. As the rush of tornados, earthquakes and typhoons indicates, we are not the worst builders in the world, but as the richest and most powerful country in the world, we watch our houses-of-sticks explode and our flimsy floodwalls disappear into the muck. Amsterdam,Holland was the home of my great-great etc. explorer Willem Schouten, who named Cape Horn in 1616. Four hundred years later, Amsterdam stands tall and dry and a monument to culture and art.
A child can push a knife into a mudpie and see it topple, and answer what the USACOE cannot. Shame on us.

[bobnjersey]

[Oh no.. CBS is run by Democrats.. they deleted my post about how two Democrats]
[Posted by cornbiker at 03:55 PM : May 22, 2008]

don''t think so. contrary to ''your'' popular belief ... the liberals are not behind everything you don''t like ... don''t believe in ... or don''t benefit from.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/47530.php

[talkingham]

Yes, please save the Polar bears and New Orleans ''cause we sure can''t afford another year of King Bush and his Saudis buddies no matter how much Viagra Rush Limbaugh takes to the Domincan Republic and blames tree huggers for all his little bitty problems down there, you know, down THERE..

[hsbarney]

It would be cheaper to move NO 40 miles inland brick by brick and build a NEW New Orleans.

[usmcvn2]

Save the Polar Bears!!!

[usmcvn2]

Its Bush''s fault!!

[bobnjersey]

[but did you really have to contradict yourself and call someone a "Bushie" and "Bushie brain"? You must be one of those psuedo intellectual liberals who thinks it is okay for libs to use insulting terms, but no one else. ]
[Posted by bullyforhim at 12:36 PM : May 22, 2008]

it''s often that many don''t really want the discussion to be at a higher level ... you''re own use of the term ''lib'' could be viewed as a slur against ''left thinking'' types.

anyone who at this stage continues to support all that defines the policies and politics of the bush administration are likely best characterized as ''authoritarian followers'' ... a personality classification that has decades of research behind it ... and is uncanny it''s accuracy.

most don''t know what it is ... those who suffer from it''s effects don''t want to know what it is ... which in itself is one of they symptoms of the condition.

these online threads are full of them. ''bushie'' could be classified as a slang for what really defines them and their view of the world. you can read about it here (many other sources available).

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[bobnjersey]

[The new superlative in the scatalogical reference library may be a "Katrina." A catastrophy everyone saw coming, was prepared for, destroyed homes, a city and its people as well as their trust in government. ]
[Posted by mjlewis6 at 01:30 PM : May 22, 2008]

there''s another ''katrina'' coming ... it wont be local to NO ... it will destroy more than homes ... and nobody seems to really care.

who won american idol ... who''s off survivor this week ... the era of every pitcher in the league ... and whether or not barry bonds and roger clemens lied is way more important ... at least for now.

[david1737]

Bottom line McCain said this about Pastor Hagee:

I''m "very honored by Pastor John Hagee''''s endorsement."

-John McCain

[david1737]

More quotes from Pastor Hagee:

"Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist."

-Pastor John Hagee in his book What Every Man Wants in a Woman (Charisma House, 2005)

[david1737]

McCain said he was "very honored by Pastor John Hagee''s endorsement."


"I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans."

Pastor Hagee

[david1737]

McCain endorser and campaign contributor Pastor John Hagee:

"I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans."

Pastor Hagee

[minnick8-2009]

Would you just up and leave everyone and everthing you know and all that you have worked to achieve?
Posted by kellie97

Kellie,
For a number of reasons, I have moved 26 times in my life, but I must say, I don''t enjoy it and I haven''t now for a long time; it isn''t easy.
My point is not that New Orleans shouldn''t be rebuilt, but that obviously it was never set up to withstand the worst case scenario. As far as the rebuilt levy is concerned right now, according to this CBS News report, it is leaking. I think since the technology exists to build effective, workable levies that keep back the water, such as the Dutch have created on the North Sea, then we, the USA should build those types of levies. If that doesn''t happen for whatever financial or political reasons, then persons who stay there are doing it at their own risk.

People in NO are going to have to lobby hard for effective levies. Good luck, I hope you are successful if enough people there want them.

[lsv1974]

Bully,

You''re taking this way to seriously. Don''t you have
anything better to do?