Environmental Engineering Reference
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back to the site of my previous home in New Orleans—and what are the new owners
doing? Dragging wet mattresses out the door to dry in the sun. What does that mean?
That with all the struggle and money and resolution, we still failed to get the job done.
The Corps is misleading people into false self-confidence about the level of protection
they have from flooding.”
New Orleans has long been dominated by politicians and their cronies who allegedly
control the city's flood defenses and water systems through patronage. The designing
and building of flood defenses was directed by local political considerations as much as
by a desire for public safety. The Corps plays along, critics charge. “ Corps oicials, un-
der pressure , repeatedly justify unworthy projects, which displace limited funds needed
by more critical projects elsewhere,” the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) wrote in
a 2007 report. In the five years before Katrina hit, for instance, Louisiana received far
more federal fundin g —$1.9 billion—than any other state for water projects, according
to the EDF . Yet only a small percentage of that money was spent on strengthening New
Orleans's levees.
“Good engineers are good worriers, just like good doctors are,” said Bea. “I worried
a lot about New Orleans before Katrina hit. A Category Three storm was predicted, but
people didn't want to hear it. They care about where the fish are biting, or how the Saints
are doing—'Laissezlesbonstempsrouler!'It's endearing, I guess. But it can have tragic
consequences.”
“NOT A 'NATURAL' DISASTER”
On September 27, 2005, four weeks after Hurricane Katrina submerged the Gulf coast,
Bob Bea and his UC Berkeley colleague Dr. Raymond Seed arrived in New Orleans to
lead the most prominent independent investigation of the disaster that killed over eight-
een hundred people and swamped the Big Easy. he result was an encyclopedic report
on what they deemed the “catastrophic” and “unnecessary” failure of the flood defenses
that were supposed to protect lives and property.
By the time the hurricane crossed Plaquemines Parish, a peninsula that juts out into
the Gulf below New Orleans, it had weakened from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm,
yet Katrina still managed to punch through nine “secure” levees and overtopped or un-
dercut many others. Bea's investigation revealed that the levee failures were caused by
faulty design, shoddy workmanship, poor maintenance, and a culture of “hubris and ar-
rogance” that prevented Corps engineers from listening to constructive criticism from
outsiders. When the Corps protested that it had done all it could to protect New Or-
leans, Bea scoffed, “This was not a 'natural' disaster. It was a man-made disaster. And,
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