Katrina Coverage

From this:
When the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board developed a plan in 1981 to improve street drainage by dredging the 17th Street canal to increase capacity for Pump Station No.¤6, residents across the city applauded. Increasingly heavy rains were not only flooding streets, but pushing water into homes. Action was needed. It seemed […]

"Team Louisiana", the state-sponsored "forensic levee investigation team" with "six LSU professors and three independent engineers" says the floodwall on the 17th street canal was bound to fail due to improper design that didn't take into account weak soils below the levee.
And, they say that bad design should have been obvious to those responsible: the […]

The WSJ has a long article on the Orleans Levee Board. To the right you see one of their trademarked line drawings, this time of that board's former head.
To save time, I'll let Harry Shearer summarize the WSJ piece:
concentrates on the fractured responsibility of the levee boards, sewerage and water board, and Port, as well […]

You can download several PDFs here listing various rebuilding contracts awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and dear old DoD. They also have tips on how to pay for all that reconstruction.

From this:
Sheet piling supporting the failed floodwall on the 17th Street Canal extends just 10 feet below sea level, 7 feet shorter than the Corps of Engineers has maintained, a team of investigators said Wednesday [11/9], strengthening earlier findings that faulty design and construction played a role in the canal breaches that flooded much of […]

From this:
When the Texas construction firm AquaTerra Contracting began work on an Army Corps of Engineers hurricane protection project on New Orleans' West Bank, it encountered a serious problem: Its floodwalls wouldn't stand up straight in the mushy soil.
AquaTerra workers tried driving steel sheet piling down to the 55-foot depth the design required for the […]

From Many decisions led to failed levees:
It was a simple solution that could have prevented one of the worst disasters in the nation's history: metal gates at the mouths of New Orleans' canals that closed automatically to block hurricane storm surges on Lake Pontchartrain.
But the gates were never built. Local officials objected to the Army […]

From Winners of Katrina contracts defend deals:
…During the [House] hearing, lawmakers criticized several contracting deals. They cited some news reports in which roofing companies allegedly were making a windfall from overpriced Army Corps deals.
When Col. Norbert Doyle, who handles contracting for the Army Corps, said he didn't have any information about the agreements and would […]

From this:
Repairs to New Orleans' levees may be insufficient to protect residents moving back to the devastated city if another hurricane comes before the tropical storm season ends this month, expert engineers said Wednesday.
Dozens of breaches continue to mar the city's levee system, including a large seep at the Industrial Canal last week, according to […]

Here's their press release:
Many of the New Orleans levee and floodwall failures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina occurred at weak-link junctions where different levee or wall sections joined together, according to a preliminary report released today (Wednesday, Nov. 2) by independent investigators from the University of California, Berkeley, and the American Society of Civil […]