Katrina Coverage

Katrina may mean MR-GO has to go
…After massive flooding killed hundreds in St. Bernard Parish, eastern New Orleans and the Lower 9th Ward, there is growing consensus that Katrina's surge was made far worse by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a 76-mile shortcut between the city and the Gulf of Mexico. And while the shipping industry […]

From this:
[Jesse] Jackson believes a big barge crashed through the floodwall here [Industrial Canal], bringing the tidal surge into this neighborhood, causing the devastation.
According to Ernest Murry from the Army Corps of Engineers, everything - including who owns the barge - is still up in the air. The barge has an ID #, but they […]

The DMN's "Seafood industry forced over the edge" reports that the $2.6 billion a year industry has been severely damaged by both hurricanes:
…That has heightened uncertainty about the future of an industry that provides nearly 30,000 jobs and lands almost half of the shrimp, 26 percent of the crabs and 37 percent of the oysters […]

There are several pictures of a barge that ran into a levee here. Note that those are on the Mississippi River side of things, and apparently no flooding was caused by those barges. Here's an aerial shot.
However, a commentor at a previous post of his site had this to say:
I've been speaking with some evacuees […]

Ivor van Heerden and others from LSU's Hurricane Center now say that the flooding of New Orleans was caused by either faulty design or fault construction of the floodwalls, rather than overtopping or other explanations: "Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding". (Note that the WaPo's headline is confused: they aren't talking about the […]

From "What caused the flood? Take your pick":
The ''more funding for levees'' argument perpetuates a common misperception. The long-standing earthen levees surrounding the city did not fail. It was the floodwalls around the drainage canals that protrude into New Orleans that were overwhelmed. One breach seems to have been caused by a barge breaking loose […]

The NYT article linked in "St. Bernard Parish defenseless from storms til 2006" also includes this:
[St. Bernard Parish], which unlike New Orleans lies above sea level, was protected by the levee from the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a canal built by the corps that is now a subject of scrutiny. Completion of the canal four decades […]