KATRINA REPORT #7

Thanksgiving, Lee Circle And The Costliest Engineering Mistake In American History

On Thanksgiving morning, Sydney (the dog) and I started out early on our morning walk two blocks to the grassy areas that surround Lee Circle. Lee Circle anchors one end of St. Charles Avenue, a street of about 4 miles following the curve of the Mississippi River. The St. Charles & Carrollton Railroad from the early 1900’s was replaced by the street cars when the city expanded. It used to be one of the prettiest streets in and perhaps all of the US with its large “neutral ground,” numerous trees and steel trolley rails like bright ribbons in the sun. Right now it’s a tired old lady with minor trash floating around, steel sign posts bent by the wind of Hurricane Katrina and a number of the avenue’s long decorative light poles still on the ground surrounded by yellow caution tape – a few still lit at night as if straining to be helpful even though they have fallen over. The “round about” of Lee Circle is prime real estate although it does have a couple of small vacant lots and a closed Exxon station. Half a block away is K&B Plaza whose owner took most of the outdoor sculptures from the raised piazza to make and fund one of the great sculpture gardens of the world at the New Orleans Museum of Art. On another side is the three story balconied building of Taylor Energy flying the flags of the US, , the Marine Corp and Taylor Energy; Christmas bunting and wreaths have just gone up. There’s a small hotel with a sign in the window advertising “Asian Tappas” – whatever that is. But on early Thanksgiving morning, as on every other early morning, there are over 50 men standing in groups at the Shell station across the street. You can tell the younger ones because they have their baseball caps on sideways. Almost all are Hispanic. The whites can be counted on the fingers of one hand; the number of blacks on less than two. They don’t mingle. A black two door pickup pulls into the station and a few men get into the back seat and more in the flat bed. A large high sided open truck with “Roofing” on its side pulls in and loads up. These are the same men who make home the pedestal of Lee’s statue when there is no where else to go. Someone has removed the Port-a-Potty at the end of the trolley tracks so urination on the base of General Lee is the rule, not the exception. The four very large concrete trash containers by the street also have been removed; now there is only one small green trash receptacle. There must be much more of a story here but, at least with the small group I approached, my Spanish and their English were not good enough to converse. Except that they did like Sydney.

Later on Thanksgiving morning, Eddy and I decided to visit another area of the city we had not seen since returning. We drove out to the marina area of Lake Pontchartrain. It, like all of the lakefront area, is complete devastation. During the height of the flood, some friends trapped in their lakefront high rise condo – along with firemen who had taken refuge in the building – watched the old Southern Yacht Club burn to the waterline because no one could get to it. The red roofed Coast Guard station is on its side and split

1 in the middle. The whole Lake Vista residential area like so many others is a ghost town. With the exception of a few sightseeing cars like ours and one lady sitting in front of her home cleaning glassware, there was no movement and no life of any kind for block upon block of once vibrant neighborhoods. Many of the automobiles remain still covered with the gray-brown residue of the flood. These vacant upscale lake neighborhoods are said to provide 40% of the total tax base of New Orleans. These areas and many others of the city we have been through remind me of the scene in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg where Spencer Tracy takes a ride through the vacant bombed out city. The five story high pile of trash and garbage along Pontchartrain Boulevard is almost all gone to land fills, but the collection of trees, limbs, branches and plant debris is still there: one football field wide, three football fields long, two stories high.

We visited the site of the break in the 17th Street Canal. If possible, the houses in this area show even more destruction than others. The US Corps of Engineers was working on the site putting up a coffer dam [sheet pilings around the break area]. The levee is still leaking into the neighborhood. I understand that they are driving sheet pilings 40 feet long – but doing nothing about the expanse of much shorter sheet piles on either side that were the original source of the break. The most devastating statistic that I’ve heard to date showing US Corps of Engineers incompetence is from an impeccable source. He was, for 30 years, the chief engineer for the New Orleans agency that has the responsibility for sewerage and water. I’ve known him for years and learned to trust his word about issues of drainage and flood protection. The 17th Street Canal begins at where there is major underground water collection box, 8 feet square. The Canal empties into Lake Pontchartrain at the other end. A large pumping station with pumps the size of small buildings sits in the middle of the 17th Street Canal about a mile or less from the lake. The area from Claiborne to the pumping station also has levees that are under the control of the city’s Sewerage & Water Board. When those levees and flood improvements were made, my friend directed that 80 foot inverted “T” pilings be driven. That part of the 17th Street Canal from the pumping station to the lake is under the control of the US Corps of Engineers. When the levees on either side of that area were “improved” several years ago, they were supposed to have used 18 foot “I” pilings – with the disastrous results. [Recent investigation reports seem to indicate that they only went 10 feet below the surface.] The break occurred from soil erosion about 30 feet below the levee. The newspaper today has large headlines, based upon recent studies, saying, “DOOMED TO FAILURE.” One sentence in the article is worth quoting: “That miscalculation was so obvious and fundamental, investigators said, they ‘could not fathom’ how the design team of engineers from the corps, local firm Eustis Engineering and the national firm Modjeski and Masters could have missed what is being termed the costliest engineering mistake in American history.”

After the levee broke, my friend saw the Corp dropping rip-rap, 8 feet pieces of broken concrete, into the break site. He told the Corps to use something else because water still could get through the broken pieces of concrete and it would be impossible to come back later to drive new sheet pilings over the break site to make repairs. The Corp knew better and proceeded. Result: the coffer dam construction now is necessary because new sheet piling cannot be driven in a straight line across the levee break to repair it.

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There was another interesting disclosure a few days ago. Of 135 Katrina related bills introduced in the Republican Congress, only 15 passed – but none dealt with flood control or repair.

Last night, NBC news estimated that the current population of New Orleans is 60,000, down from close to 500,000. At that number, every man, woman and child could have a seat in the Superdome.

There are many more stories:

New Orleans is (was) a major medical center. Both Tulane and LSU have medical schools here and each used Charity Hospital as a teaching facility. Charity was begun by Gov. Huey Long in the early 1930’s but long has been in a functioning state of decay. Charity now is closed. There is substantial movement to move the whole LSU medical school and complex to Baton Rouge, the state capital. That’s where the main university campus is located. It is likely that a new billion dollar “Charity Hospital” will be built. If the purpose is to serve a large population of the poor, the truth is that Baton Rouge now has more people than New Orleans – all due to Katrina.

One member of our Thanksgiving dinner group is a hotel consultant. One of her hotel’s occupancy rates is down almost 50%. But, she said, management is not going to reopen more than 50% of the rooms because insurance won’t pay loss of income if more than 50% are opened and despite substantial revenue losses.

Another family member is a small shop owner on . She said that if these small merchants do not make their profit during these closing months of 2005, then 50% of them will close permanently.

A friend went with a group to feed homeless animals in the flooded Lower Ninth Ward, another flattened area and still off limits to the general public. She said that the animals are survivors from the flood, but hide when people come around. Food is put out in containers. She lasted a couple of hours and went home to collapse in tears. Everyone has a story worth telling.

Are there signs of improvement? Yes. Almost everyone who has been here a while says that each week shows some noticeable improvement. Today, I noticed that a Popeye’s Fried Chicken opened down the block and is crowded. Joggers have returned to run in the sneaker-worn areas between the tracks on St. Charles Avenue – hopefully missing the droppings from the many dogs. The bomb crater holes where trees once stood around the perimeter of Lee Circle now are filled level. There are more jazz clubs opening (some bars never closed). And a new Mardi Gras is being planned for a few million dollars in beads, bands and costumes. If that’s progress, so be it.

A few days ago, a friend sent me his “Thanksgiving Report” that he wrote for his family and friends. He and his wife are attorneys; his wife holds an important position in

3 city government. My friend’s analysis of the present condition of New Orleans is one of the most realistic I have read. With his permission, I’ve included a couple of excerpts below.

The task of planning, managing, and executing a rebuilding program for the city is mind boggling in both complexity and scope. All local governments are struggling to do what needs to be done to provide for the public safety while promoting recovery and rebuilding. The city government has no income to speak of other than whatever money FEMA doles out.

One major concern in New Orleans is the weakened state of the repaired flood walls and levees, and the length of time it will take to repair and improve the flood control systems. It now clearly appears that the areas that failed were just not built according to the approved plans, and are in fact much weaker than even the minimum specifications required. Even if everything is repaired to bring it back to a pre-Katrina condition by next summer, it is now apparent that our flood protection is nowhere near as safe or as strong as the Category 3 protection most people (including the Corps of Engineers) assumed we had before the storm. IF Congress appropriates the money to pay for a major upgrade in hurricane protection in our area, and IF the Corps of Engineers and levee boards can build it very quickly, and IF we don't get another major hurricane in the interim, the Corps should be able to make enough improvements to stand up to a strong Category 3 storm within 3 years. It will probably take 10 years or longer of continuous hard work to get anything close to Category 5 protection, assuming Congress will pay for it. I believe that the lack of reliable hurricane protection will hold back the re-development of the city more than any other factor. The insurance companies, banks, and other businesses will all be very reluctant to make major, long term investments in an area that will be vulnerable to hurricanes for the next 10 or 20 years.

The sad and angry bottom line is that the destruction of one of America’s great, historic and fun cities was caused by negligence, greed and stupidity. And it’s not coming back any time soon.

Bill Rosen November 30, 2005 New Orleans

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