Hurricane Katrina so weakened New Orleans’ 350-mile levee system that it probably can’t protect the city from flooding even in a relatively minor storm, officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said.
While workers have closed most of the breaches that allowed the city to flood after Katrina, none of the burst levees has been returned to its pre-flood height, corps officials said. Many other sections of the levees have washed away or have eroded enough that even a small rise in the surrounding waters would spill into the city.
Engineers were working feverishly Tuesday to close gaps.
Corps engineers dropped 80 10,000-pound sandbags into the breaches Tuesday in an effort to close them.
Walls along two canals are so damaged, however, that corps officials decided Tuesday to seal the canals’ entrances to Lake Pontchartrain temporarily – even though such a move will render them useless in carrying out their designated purpose, draining rainwater from the city into the lake.
Brig Gen. Robert Crear, the commander of the corps’ Katrina recovery task force, said Tuesday he thought the levees might be able to handle a storm surge of up to 5 feet, far less than the 17 feet that Katrina brought.
He said there was no way the levee system could be repaired before Rita hits and that the goal was to make repairs in time for next year’s hurricane season, which begins June 1.
