NEW ORLEANS — The massive levee system protecting New Orleans has sustained heavy damage well beyond the five breaches that are widely known to have caused flooding after Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Monday. Miles of levees that protected the eastern flank of the region, which borders Lake Borgne, washed away in the storm surge from Katrina, which swept inland and caused deep flooding in St. Bernard Parish and the 9th Ward of New Orleans.
Army officials disclosed the destruction of the city's eastern levee system in a detailed helicopter tour of the region Monday. Unlike some of the levees in New Orleans that continuously hold water back from areas below sea level, these levees exist mainly to repel storm surges.
The loss of the levees has left portions of New Orleans with little or no protection midway through the hurricane season, senior Army officials said. And rebuilding the levees will be a massive undertaking that could take years, meaning the city could be vulnerable for a long time.
"It is gone," said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the Army Corps' head engineer for the New Orleans district. "It is literally leveled in places. The power of the surge in this storm was greatly underestimated." Wagenaar estimated that 90% of the levee system protecting the region's eastern flank had been knocked out.
EDIT
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-corps13sep13,1,7763436.storyLink replaced - crossing fingers . . .
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x30783
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