Army Corps of Engineers to Launch New Orleans Levee Probe

 The Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday it is launching a formal investigation into the failures of storm walls and levees in New Orleans, which inundated 80 percent of the city during Hurricane Katrina and caused hundreds of deaths. 



 Since the Aug. 29 failure of three concrete walls that protected New Orleans from storm surges, Army engineers have issued a number of informal assessments and conclusions, but the organization has not moved forward until now with any formal investigation. 



 The probe is expected to take eight months, an Army Corps spokesman in New Orleans said. The board has not yet been appointed but would include both Corps and outside experts, run out of the Corps' Washington headquarters, he added. 



 The storm walls were along two drainage canals and a large shipping channel, part of New Orleans' complex flood control system. Five separate breaches occurred in the walls, some hundreds of feet in length, opening up the city to a surge of water more than 12 feet above sea level. Much of New Orleans lies below sea level. 



 The initial assessments laid the blame for the failures on the severity of Katrina. The flood control structures were originally designed to protect the city from a Category 3 hurricane. When Katrina first hit the Louisiana coastline it ranked as a Category 4. Such an assessment virtually eliminated any consideration that defects in the design or construction could have played a role in the failures. 



 The investigation, however, will examine the design, construction and inspection of the storm wall system, as well as contract documents, to determine the causes of the failures, the Army spokesman said. 



 Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., as well as other elected leaders, have called for a wide ranging independent investigation of the hurricane's impact. But Landrieu and others have focused their attention on the alleged failures of federal emergency personnel after the hurricane, rather than the technical causes of the flooding. 



 The Corps also said Wednesday it plans to restore New Orleans' levee and storm protection system to pre-hurricane levels by June 2006, meaning the city must go through the balance of the current hurricane season with a compromised levee system. 



 Apart from the breaches in the storm walls, Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed hundreds of miles of levees, particularly those protecting the city's eastern flank. It also badly scoured levee foundations along miles of the main levee system for the Mississippi River, south of New Orleans. A large storm surge is believed to have swept over the top of the levees and badly eroded the earth structures. In some areas, the levees disappeared altogether. 



 Rebuilding those levees, even over the next nine months, is expected to require a massive construction effort.