Levees not designed for Katrina-strength storm, official says

Can we stop playing politics now?

The levee system that protected New Orleans from hurricane-caused surges along Lake Pontchartrain was never designed to survive a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3 storm, something projections suggested would strike New Orleans only once every two or three centuries, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, told reporters in a conference call. Katrina was a Category 4 storm.

“Unfortunately, that occurred in this case,” Strock said.

Strock said that the levee system’s design was settled on a quarter of a century ago, before the current numerical system of classifying storms was in widespread use. He said that studies had begun recently on strengthening the system to protect against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn’t progressed very far.

Strock added that despite a May report by the Corps’ Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing the Corps could have done recently would have prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.

“The levee projects that failed were at full project design and were not really going to be improved,” Strock said.

Posted by JimK at 02:55 AM on September 02, 2005
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