N.O. area levee improvements already outdated, engineer says

Even as contractors for the Army Corps of Engineers are putting finishing touches on the major upgrades to the New Orleans area levee system built to design standards adopted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, The Times-Picayune reports a consulting engineer working for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority–East says those standards are already outdated. Bob Jacobsen told the authority on Thursday that a review he led—which included experts from the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute—found that while the standards used to upgrade the levees were dramatic improvements when adopted seven years ago, engineering and science have sped forward, often spurred by research conducted in Katrina’s aftermath. Jacobsen says the purpose of the review is not to question the ability of the new levee system to dramatically reduce the risk of property damage from flooding in New Orleans, or to challenge new digital flood insurance risk maps about to be released for much of New Orleans by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, which will be used to adjust local flood insurance rates. Rather, the study is aimed at directing plans for upgrades of both the levee system and interior drainage projects to deal with what’s called “residual risk”: in this case, the potential effects of storm surge flooding on the city’s economy and on the public perception that New Orleans is a safe place to live. The full story is here.