Report: Corps failed to plan for Louisiana wetlands loss

The Army Corps of Engineers has fallen far short of Congress’ demand after Hurricane Katrina to draw up urgent plans for protecting coastal Louisiana against sea level rise, wetlands loss and hurricanes, a National Academy of Sciences report finds. In November 2005, Congress asked the Army Corps to do a full-bore “analysis and design” of methods to protect coastal Louisiana from Category 5 hurricanes. However, the agency instead came up with broad plans and no recommendations, according to a report by the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. The Army Corps was also late in getting the study done, missing the original December 2007 deadline by nearly two years, the NRC report says. The Corps is expected to submit its report, known as the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration plan, to Congress later this year. “The lack of a comprehensive, long-term hurricane protection and coastal restoration plan—and the lack of advice on initial high-priority steps and projects—represent substantial shortcomings,” the NRC report says. Re-engineering the Mississippi River delta, and in the process protecting coastal Louisiana, is “an incredibly complicated problem,” says Robert Dalrymple, a civil engineer at Johns Hopkins University who led the NRC committee that reviewed the Army Corps’ work. He says the report doesn’t adequately explain how to do that.