CHALMETTE, La. (AP) — Even though Hurricane Katrina exposed the weakness of the levee system around New Orleans, officials won't rebuild the barriers higher and better — at least not right away.

Col. Lewis Setliff, the engineer overseeing the levee repairs for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the Corps only has the authority to rebuild levees to the strength they were prior to the storms that damaged them.

The levees that broke were built to withstand Category 3 hurricanes, which have winds up to 130 mph. Hurricane Katrina's winds were about 145 mph — a Category 4 — when the storm hit Louisiana.

Without approval from Congress, the Army engineers cannot build the levees higher and stronger. And even if Congress were to give that approval soon, it would come too late to allow them to be finished by the time the 2006 hurricane season begins in June.

"We've got eight months and counting," Setliff said. He added, though, that the levee system in its broken and heavily eroded state might not do much to stop flooding should the area get hit again before the current hurricane season ends in a month.

story (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-06-new-orleans-levees_x.htm?csp=34)

CHALMETTE, La. (AP) — Even though Hurricane Katrina exposed the weakness of the levee system around New Orleans, officials won't rebuild the barriers higher and better — at least not right away.

Col. Lewis Setliff, the engineer overseeing the levee repairs for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the Corps only has the authority to rebuild levees to the strength they were prior to the storms that damaged them.

The levees that broke were built to withstand Category 3 hurricanes, which have winds up to 130 mph. Hurricane Katrina's winds were about 145 mph — a Category 4 — when the storm hit Louisiana.

Without approval from Congress, the Army engineers cannot build the levees higher and stronger. And even if Congress were to give that approval soon, it would come too late to allow them to be finished by the time the 2006 hurricane season begins in June.

"We've got eight months and counting," Setliff said. He added, though, that the levee system in its broken and heavily eroded state might not do much to stop flooding should the area get hit again before the current hurricane season ends in a month.

story (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-06-new-orleans-levees_x.htm?csp=34)

I would suggest that anything is better than nothing, but I hope that they will design the construction to make it easy to build on the new stuff that I hope congress will authorise.

I know America is not keen on learning from other nations, but the other nation that is in a similar position is the Netherlands, after the dykes went in the '50s and they lost loads of land, etc. Now the dykes are designed for paranoids and then doubled.

just knock em down and save us a buttload of money.

just knock em down and save us a buttload of money.

You can't just abandon New Orleans and leave it. It's really not an option, as there are no other places to build a city where the Mississippi River runs into the Gulf of Mexico. It's too important historically, and commercially, to just let it go.
The levees could be built higher, and properly, if Congress quit pork barrel spending long enough to do what is required, though.

Good. Then they will be ready to be exploded the next time a Republican president needs a distraction from an "illegal" war.