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.

Thanks for the link.

Bea rocks. He's all up in the Corps grill. I'm working on a long post that quotes from him. I may need to buy one of his books to better understand some of the equations about "factor of safety" he included in an email to me. But basically, the Corps standards for safety margins are appallingly weak, and are inappropriate for structures that are intended to protect a city.

By the way, the MRGO is immensely unpopular in SE Louisiana these days.
- mark 5-08-2007 7:13 pm [add a comment]