Could it have been the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 40 -year-old underutilized channel funnelled the storm surge into the New Orleans Industrial Canal and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway -- and from there into New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish and beyond?

Authorities have not yet concluded what caused the drowning of New Orleans, and most attention has focused on two breached floodwalls near Lake Pontchartrain, to the city's north. But now experts believe that the initial flooding that overwhelmed St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans came from the Gulf Outlet, a channel that was an ecological and economic disappointment long before Hurricane Katrina.

Satellite images show that levees along the outlet were severely damaged by storm surges. Flyovers by the Army Corps of Engineers have revealed a path of destruction consistent with Mashriqui's theory that the Outlet provided a pathway for storm surges from the Gulf and neighboring Lake Borgne.

Mashriqui had warned that the confluence of the MRGO and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway created a funnel that would direct storm surges into the New Orleans Industrial Canal and on into St. Bernard Parish. On the Friday before Katrina made landfall, the parish's state senator, Walter Boasso, complained at a congressional hearing that the federal government was "playing Russian roulette" with his constituents.

Katrina's first storm surges apparently shot up the Gulf Outlet and neighboring Lake Borgne from the southeast, then overtopped levees along the Outlet and the Industrial Canal. The floodwaters eventually breached the Industrial Canal's levees, and officials believe a large portion of the Outlet's levees have been destroyed as well.

"That funnel was a back door into New Orleans," said G. Paul Kemp, an oceanographer at the LSU Hurricane Center. "I don't think there's much doubt that was the initial cause of the disaster."

In other words, it may have been a failed attempt to create an efficient port that caused the flooding and the levee breakage, not the storm itself.

Oh, and by the way, please note this.

Before Katrina, the Corps was already studying whether to close the canal. The initial conclusion was no, but the Bush administration ordered the agency to redo its analysis.

The main advocates for the channel were the Port of New Orleans and its supporters in the Corps of Engineers and in Louisiana's congressional delegation. "You had the people of St. Bernard Parish against the Port of New Orleans," Boasso said at a community meeting Monday. "And the Port of New Orleans had the clout."

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John Paul Woodley Jr., the assistant Army secretary who oversees the Corps, said the Bush administration had to instruct the agency to restart its study of whether to close the channel, because it hadn't taken into account the channel's destruction of wetlands, even though it was conducting a separate study of a $14 billion project to restore Louisiana's coastal wetlands. Woodley said there was also concern that further erosion could merge the channel with Lake Borgne -- which happened after Katrina.

So, whose priorities resulted in this catastrophe? Sounds like those local congressional delegation, not the president.

More at Strata-Spere and Liberal Common Sense (the title of this blog is the only way you'll ever see those three words adjacent to each other on RWR)

Posted by: Greg at 07:06 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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