New Orleans files $77 billion claim against Corps

[133724]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The city of New Orleans filed a $77 billion damage claim against the Army Corps of Engineers Thursday for flooding that inundated the city when levees failed after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

Under the Federal Tort Act, Thursday was the last day residents could file such a claim against the Corps. The claim is a required step before any lawsuit could be brought to recover damages.

City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields said uncertainty over which federal statute might govern the city's damage claims against the Corps made it "prudent" to file under the tort act "to preserve the city's claim."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/01/katrina.claim/index.html

[ClintonTyree]

1. Good for them...

the Corps knew all along that the levees were substandard and did nothing to rectify the situation. Someone has to pay. The rebuilding of the City has stalled because the government is dragging it's feet and they haven't provided anywhere near the Federal dollars they promised.

I know this will be a dragged out affair with probably nothing to show for it at the end, but someone must be held accountable. And it just might, MIGHT provide the impetus to step up the rebuilding efforts of one of America's most cherished cities.

[Hubert Flottz]

2. If we can afford to rebuild Iraq we can't afford not to rebuild NOLA!

BushCo is either with America, or against us!

[Boo Boo]

3. The levees held up fine

It was the new barriers, flood control walls kind of like a dam, that failed. There were three built: one was built under contract directly to a parish, and the other two were built under contract to the Army Corps of Engineers. The two that were built for the Army failed, and the one built for the parish survived.

At the time of their construction, the engineer that designed the good wall advised the Army that they had spec'd the walls wrong. He said they should be designed as T-Walls rather than I-Walls; that the ground they were being built on was too saturated and weak to support an I-Wall. The Army rejected his advice and terminated his services. I think I also read somewhere that, regardless of the type of wall built, the Army may have also been negligent in their oversight of the construction project. That is, T-Wall or not, the walls were not correctly built.

In any case, the new walls were supposed to be able to withstand the forces they were exposed to that night. Katrina was not really "the big one." The big one was supposed to be at least Cat 4, and actually hit New Orleans. Katrina was Cat 3 at most when it came ashore in Biloxi, Mississippi.

So, that's why the Army is getting sued, and I'm surprised it's taken so long. The flooding of New Orleans was a man made disaster, and it happened because those two walls did not meet the design spec of being able to withstand a Cat 3 hurricane, which we've all been told for years that they would. Everybody thought that the problem was that there were still old earthen levees that needed to be replaced, but this storm wasn't even strong enough to cause the old levees to fail, and what they were replacing those levees with was worse.

It's amazing to think that if all three walls had been built to the spec that the one good wall was built to, New Orleans could have ridden the storm out with ease. Talk about penny wise and pound foolish. The richest nation on the planet loses a major port city, because they nickel and dimed what was actually a relatively inexpensive flood control project.

Fucking amazing.