Editorial: Levee Failure, Katrina Response Separate Items

About the time we thought news about Katrina would settle down to complaints over slow recovery, new documents are taking us back almost to day one. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco recently released more than 100,000 documents related to the storm. Last week, a special House committee released correspondence among officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on problems in Mississippi.

According to the Associated Press, “Taken together the details from both states provide evidence that FEMA was unable to provide fast help at disaster sites—even when the needs were obvious.”

A September 1 message to FEMA headquarters from William Carwile, the agency’s top responder in Mississippi, provides a good reason for not jumping the gun on judgement.

“This is unlike what we have seen before,” he said. He then went on to describe the difficulty of getting body bags and refrigerated trucks to Hancock County, Miss. There will continue to be criticism of FEMA and some state officials. Yet, dealing with a storm larger than expected and doing it for the first time are major reasons for response being what it was.

We are reminded by Wilfred M. McClay, writing in Commentary Magazine, that it was breaches in three different levees [in New Orleans] “after Katrina’s concentrated fury had passed…that transformed Katrina from an ordinary hurricane into the most expensive natural disaster in American history.” McClay served on the faculty of Tulane University in New Orleans from 1987 to 1999 and now teaches history and humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The title of his current article is “The Storm Over Katrina.”

Having learned that Katrina struck as a Category 3 storm rather than the Category 4 or 5 expected, we are left with the questions related to why the levees failed. Engineering evaluations revealed that construction of some levees was inadequate. Sheeting pilings, in some cases, were not driven to a depth specified in plans, thus permitting water to undercut the levees and/or floodwalls, some of which ultimately just collapsed. Monitoring construction and fraud committed by contractors also came up for discussion.

The issue of inadequate levee construction opens a large door. In Taming The Upper Mississippi, by Janice Petterchak, we are informed by civil engineer William H. Klingner, P.E., P.L.S., that “In the southern reaches [of the Mississippi River], French colonizer Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville in 1718 established the settlement of New Orleans along a bend in the Mississippi.” His engineer knew the area was prone to flooding and recommended “building a good dike of earth along the front of the city.” By 1735 both sides of the river were leveed for about 30 miles above and 12 miles below New Orleans.

That tells us that activity involving New Orleans levees has gone on for more than 270 years. At what various points during near three centuries have engineers evaluated the adequacy of levee construction? The sheet pile commonly used today had not even been invented, so we must concede that there has been a huge learning curve between then and now. Nature has shown us convincingly that building levees is not an exact science. Predicting precise outcomes is difficult if impossible.

We wonder how closely Jean Baptiste’s engineer monitored work on the levees. Unfortunately, construction is like every other endeavor in the world. Some people are always willing to do shoddy work in order to make a fast buck. Some increase profits by pouring driveway concrete to an inch less thickness than required by law. Shoddy building-construction practices are also too common. Internet entrepreneurs who deal with millions of customers can squeeze a penny here and a penny there and become millionaires. The list of examples is endless.

We’re told the levee system in New Orleans stretches upwards of 350 miles. Most of the nation’s population was not even living when many of the levees were first built. So we must ask, “How does one judge?” The answer is that we must do the best we can.

The process of evaluation deserves a strong application of common sense and patience. If it is found and can be proved that contractors are guilty of fraud via intentionally shoddy construction, then they should face judgement. If the system used by the Corps to monitor those who are awarded contracts is faulty, then procedures will most likely change.

But there is another kind of judgement. From the time in 1875 when James B. Eads used wood pilings, willow mattresses and stone rubble to deepen the South Pass of the Mississippi, to the modern-day efforts involving steel and concrete, builders have made judgements related to past experience. It is a growing body of knowledge, about which civil engineers sometimes disagree. So one assumes projects are based on the best information available at the time.

After all, there has been vast change in the way things are done since levee construction at New Orleans began 270 years ago.

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