Life After Katrina and Rita:
An Update on Southern Lousiana

In August 2005, the United States watched in horror as the 11th named storm of the year swept across South Florida, into the southern Gulf waters, and then, as if catching sight of the X that marks the spot, straightened its course, gathered strength, and slammed into the Louisiana/Mississippi Coast with unprecedented strength and storm surge. Only 26 days after Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita made landfall in Southwest Louisiana. Nearly two years after the one-two punch, Southern Louisiana is still recovering.

As an immediate response to these storms' effects, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) created Task Force Hope. Under the direction of Task Force Hope, the USACE performed several functions that supported emergency response, repairs, and recovery. Initial efforts focused on supporting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Emergency Support Function #3 functions such as supplying ice and water, temporary structures, debris removal, and the "blue roof" program that provides temporary plastic roofing for damaged structures.

In addition to these programs, the USACE led two major recovery missions—Task Force Unwatering and Task Force Guardian. Task Force Unwatering, composed of military, civilian, and contractor forces, successfully pumped floodwaters from the New Orleans metropolitan area in 43 days. These floodwaters covered 80 percent of the city and totaled approximately 200 billion gallons of water. Task Force Guardian led the repair efforts to damaged floodwalls, levees, and other flood control structures—all of which were completed in time to protect New Orleans in the 2006 hurricane season.

Currently, Task Force Hope and its two execution arms, the Hurricane Protection Office and Protection and Restoration Office, are focused on executing billions of dollars of design and construction for additional pump stations, floodwalls, levees, and floodgates that will protect New Orleans from future hurricane damage.

"Task Force Hope is a massive program focused on improving and completing the Hurricane Protection System for the Greater New Orleans area of South Louisiana," says Gasper Chifici, PBS&J's project manager supporting the USACE in its efforts. "This national priority for the USACE includes numerous flood damage protection and coastal restoration projects that will be designed and constructed over the next few years."

What's Involved

Repairing and improving southern Louisiana's hurricane protection system includes the following:

• Building interim, then permanent, pumping facilities at the mouths of three    outfall canals (the 17th Street, Orleans, and London canals).
• Building navigable flood control gates near the Seabrook Bridge on Lake    Pontchartrain and near the confluence of the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal    (IHNC) and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW).
• Stormproof existing pump stations located throughout the metropolitan area,    and providing safe houses for pump station operators, so that these stations    will continue to operate during and after events.
• Raising and armoring portions of levees.
• Restoring the system of wetlands, marshes, and natural ridges in the
   coastal area.

In order to protect areas where there are no federal levees, the plan also suggests that nonfederal levees along evacuation routes be heightened, strengthened, and incorporated into the federal system.

Concurrent with the Hurricane Protection System repairs and improvements, the USACE tasked their Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) with conducting a technical risk assessment of the New Orleans District. On June 20, IPET rolled out the results of this assessment in a risk analysis report. The report takes a look at the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System as it relates to the risk of:

• Hazard: the probability of storms, surge, and waves.
• Protection systems: performance of levees, floodwalls, and
  other structures.
• Consequences: loss of life and property.

As a part of the risk analysis, a new advanced hurricane modeling method was developed. The models are essential in the New Orleans area, as they reveal probability of inundation, risk to population or property, as well as relative risk by parish, and principal and specific sources of risk.

On a more global scale, these models will provide information that is useful for officials and the public to make their own informed decisions during future hurricane events.

Implications for America

According to David Daniel, PhD, PE, chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel (ERP), quoting from the panel's recently released report, The New Orleans Hurricane Protection System: What Went Wrong and Why, "The lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina have profound implications for American communities and a sobering message for people nationwide: we must place the protection of public safety, health, and welfare at the forefront of our nation's priorities."

How do we make this happen? The ASCE Hurricane Katrina ERP has some ideas. As spelled out in their report, they put together 10 "critical actions":

Critical Actions

  1. Keep safety at the forefront of public priorities.
  2. Quantify the risks.
  3. Communicate the risks to the public and decide how much risk
      is acceptable.
  4. Rethink the whole system, including land use in New Orleans.
  5. Correct the deficiencies.
  6. Put someone in charge.
  7. Improve interagency coordination.
  8. Upgrade engineering design procedures.
  9. Bring in independent experts.
10. Place safety first.