- As the Army Corps of Engineers begins an investigation
into the causes of concrete floodwall breaches that swamped large portions
of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the stakes could not be higher.
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- If the failures are ultimately traced to flaws in design
or construction, it would mean that a significant portion of Katrina's
flooding could be blamed on human error. That could in turn spark a rush
to hold individuals, institutions, and companies accountable; to file multibillion-dollar
lawsuits from affected residents and businesses; and to make political
recriminations.
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- Some Corps critics already are questioning whether the
Corps - with its reputation and billions of dollars in financing on the
line - has a conflict of interest in investigating itself.
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- "It will have no credibility. If I were the Corps
of Engineers I wouldn't want the job. You would want to have the best and
most independent analysis of something like this," said Steve Ellis,
vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, an advocacy
group that has often criticized the Corps' big projects as wasteful.
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- Ivor van Heerden, the deputy director of the LSU Hurricane
Center who is studying the levee breaches with other LSU scientists, says
the Corps already has compromised some evidence with its temporary fixes
and should not conduct a completely internal investigation. "That
would be the worst thing they could do," he said.
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- Hurricane Katrina's storm surge overwhelmed hurricane
levees to the east of the city and in the Industrial Canal. But further
west along the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, the floodwaters were
lower. It's not clear whether the surge topped floodwalls in the 17th Street
and London Avenue areas. If the walls were not topped but failed anyway,
engineers say that could point to a problem in the design, construction
or maintenance of the structures.
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- The only way to conclusively determine what happened
is to conduct a forensic investigation, which involves collecting evidence
and documents and making a detailed analysis of what led to the failures.
The Corps has announced it's doing that, but has offered no details. Corps
officials did not respond Thursday to requests for more information on
the probe.
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- The issue raises a serious concern for residents returning
to New Orleans. If there are structural flaws in other floodwalls, they
could pose a risk in another storm.
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- The investigation has been slow to start. Corps officials
have been dealing with more urgent problems, such as pumping water out
of the city and repairing the breaches. Some of those activities could
pose problems for the investigation, LSU researchers say.
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- Temporary berms built by the Corps at the sites of levee
breaks have covered, and may have destroyed, evidence crucial to the investigation,
Van Heerden said.
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- "Some of the critical evidence to finding out what
went wrong so we can make sure this doesn't happen again - evidence we
saw on our first inspections - is under that berm, or it may already have
been taken away," van Heerden said after inspecting the levee breaks
this week. He said he has inspected the breaks 10 times since Katrina battered
New Orleans on Aug. 29, including five trips on foot.
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- Engineers say such an investigation of the levee failures
probably will try to reconstruct the history of the affected floodwalls
from the choice of design through the construction process and the rise
of Katrina's storm surge. That will entail examining documents, and the
deployment of engineering experts in soil compaction, steel and concrete
construction and fluid dynamics.
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- "It's a terribly interesting, difficult forensic
enterprise," said Gerald Galloway, a professor of engineering at the
University of Maryland and former Corps brigadier general. "They will
need to look at all the remainder of the walls that were there, doing a
complete analysis of everything that could have been a factor or compounding
this ... They will build some hypotheses and test them. It's a question
of patience."
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- Galloway, who chaired a commission that investigated
the causes of the 1993 Midwest floods, said such an investigation might
take six to eight months.
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- But critics say if the evidence points to human error,
it may be difficult for the Corps to point the finger at itself or contractors
it employed. The Corps and its contractors can be sued under the Federal
Tort Claims Act, said Mark Dombroff, a Washington lawyer and former chief
of the torts branch of the Justice Department who defended the Corps in
court actions.
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- The Corps also has often been criticized by a number
of impartial government studies for tweaking the numbers in economic impact
studies to facilitate its projects.
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- "They found the corps manipulated data, used outdated
engineering and economic tools, and one colonel ordered a subordinate to
change a number he didn't like," said Scott Faber, a lawyer with the
group Environmental Defense, who monitors the Corps. "There is no
doubt in my mind that the Corps will not find itself at all responsible
for the failure of the levees. It is ludicrous for the administration or
Congress to expect the agency to review its own conduct."
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- The Corps may not be completely alone.
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- Already, a number of investigations are under way, but
it's not clear how detailed some will be. A House select committee on the
Katrina disasters intends to investigate the breaches, a spokesman said.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee will dispatch investigators to the
city next week to examine the levee breaches and other issues. The American
Society of Civil Engineers is assembling a team of forensic experts to
inspect the affected sites.
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- Faber said that congressional committees - whose members
may have Corps projects in their districts - may also be reluctant to make
the agency look bad.
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- Faber, Ellis and van Heerden all said they would like
to see some sort of independent federally authorized commission look into
the levee breaches, in addition to the Corps.
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- "This investigation should include the Corps, but
it also must be totally independent to ensure there is accountability but
also public acceptance for whatever it discovers and recommends,"
van Heerden said.
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