N.O. levee breach sites rejected for national register

The National Parks Service has rejected an effort to have sites where levees breached during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 added to the National Register of Historic Places. The advocacy group Levees.Org has been pushing for almost two years to have the sites listed on the register, arguing that the flooding that resulted from the breaches was the worst civil engineering disaster in the nation’s history. The Army Corps of Engineers was highly critical of the organization’s nomination. A letter from the NPS expressed doubt about the nomination for various reasons: among them, its reliance on a limited number of studies about the causes of the breaches. The NPS says the organization can resubmit the nomination, and Levees.Org founder Sandy Rosenthal confirms today his group will do so.