Agency felt New Orleans was safe for 200-300 years
02 Sep 2005 21:45:13 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The Army Corps of Engineers believed the New Orleans levee system would protect the city for 200 or 300 years, but it was not designed to guard against a storm as powerful as Hurricane Katrina that thoroughly overwhelmed it, the head of the agency said on Friday.
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, also said Bush administration funding cuts for the system of levees, floodgates and pumping stations that failed to protect the city had not contributed to the disaster.
"At the time that these levees were designed and constructed, it was felt that that was an adequate level given the probability of an event like this occurring," said Strock, whose agency handles the infrastructure of U.S. waterways.
Situated below sea level, New Orleans relied on a 300-mile (480 km) network of levees, floodgates and pumps to hold back the waters of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.
The levees were designed to protect against hurricanes only in the lowest three of five categories of intensity, Strock said. Katrina was Category Four when it hit the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday.
"We figured we had a 200- or 300-year level of protection. That means that an event that we were protecting from might be exceeded every 200 or 300 years," Strock told reporters. "So we had an assurance that 99.5 percent, this would be OK. We, unfortunately, have had that 0.5 percent activity here."
"The intensity of this storm simply exceeded the design capacity of this levee."
Strock said money was a factor in why the levees were not designed to protect against the strongest hurricanes.
"It's a combination of doing the engineering, looking at the likelihood of a given storm event, looking at the amount of effort that will be needed to protect the city in an ironclad way, and then making a decision which is based on engineering judgment and the economics of whether it's worth the cost to the benefit and then striking the right level of protection."
FUNDING CUTS
Agency documents showed administration funding cuts forced engineers to delay improvements on the levees, floodgates and pumping stations. Levees were fortified after floods in 1927 and 1965. Congress approved another upgrade after a 1995 flood.
Since 2001, the agency had requested $496 million for that project but the administration budgeted only $166 million. Congress approved $250 million. Strock said he did not believe funding levels contributed to the disaster.
Strock suggested New Orleans residents took their chances living in a city so vulnerable to a strong hurricane.
"Let me be very careful not to appear callous or draw simple analogies, but (take) San Francisco. Why do people live in San Francisco? There will be an earthquake in San Francisco," Strock said. "There will be an earthquake in Los Angeles. There will be an earthquake in Seattle, a devastating earthquake. Why do people live there?" Well, it's because that's where they live."
"The city of New Orleans just is what it is. What we do is try to put the appropriate level of protection in."
Strock said water levels had stabilized and the task at hand was to drain New Orleans, which will take an unspecified number of weeks.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Brig. Gen. Robert Crear of the Army Corps of Engineers said draining New Orleans could take between 36 and 80 days.
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