The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is involved in a wide range of public works projects, including environmental protection, water supply, recreation, flood damage and reduction, beach nourishment, homeland security, military construction, and support for other government agencies. It currently manages 740 dams across the United States and Puerto Rico. Across 12 Flood Control Acts, beginning with the first on March 1, 1917, Congress has authorized the Corps of Engineers to participate in flood protection and damage reduction in almost every state.
USACE projects are either specifically authorized by Congress or fall under a Congressionally authorized category. With projects carried out in all fifty states, local citizens, special interest groups, and political organizations may lobby Congress for authorization and funding of specific projects in their areas. These groups may also oppose some or all aspects of a USACE project.
Many civil works projects undertaken by USACE have been criticized as being riddled with patronage or a waste of resources. Examples include the New Madrid Floodway Project and the flood protection systems in New Orleans. Some projects have been described as relying on flawed or manipulated analyses during the planning phase. Certain projects have also been criticized for causing significant environmental damage or for providing limited economic benefits, such as the Mississippi River–Gulf Outlet in southeast Louisiana. Faulty design and substandard construction have been cited as contributing factors in the failure of levees following Hurricane Katrina. Former U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain have advocated for reforming the Corps' approach. Holding the Corps accountable has also been supported by the group Levees.Org, led by Sandy Rosenthal.
However, some observers argue that a key difficulty in implementing changes has been the political process itself. Whether USACE planners and engineers can achieve optimal outcomes within the constraints of the direction they receive remains part of ongoing debate.
Levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina
Description of failures On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina passed to the east of New Orleans, and the Corps' flood protection failed, with levee breaches in over fifty different areas. The levee failures caused massive flooding in New Orleans, resulting in property loss and drownings. When Katrina arrived, the hurricane protection efforts authorized were between 60% and 90% complete, with the projected date of completion estimated to be 2015.
Authorization in the Flood Control Act of 1965 The Flood Control Act of 1965 (FCA 1965) was enacted after Hurricane Betsy flooded large sections of New Orleans and mandated the US Army Corps of Engineers as the federal agency responsible for levee design and construction. Among other projects and studies, the FCA 1965 authorized the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity, Louisiana, Hurricane Protection Project. The project was to construct a series of control structures, concrete flood walls, dikes, and levees to provide hurricane protection to areas around Lake Pontchartrain. Although federally authorized, it was a joint federal, state, and local effort. The state and local effort was handled by the Orleans Levee Board, which provided operational control and maintenance of the levees after the corps turned over completed structures to it.
Investigations of the levee failures In October 2005, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Chief of Engineers and the Commander of the Corps of Engineers, established the Inter-agency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) to "provide credible and objective scientific and engineering answers to fundamental questions about the performance of the hurricane protection and flood damage reduction system in the New Orleans metropolitan area". IPET membership consisted of multiple employees of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, past and present, as well as individuals from academia, other states, water experts, and a few other federal agencies.
The same month, a Washington Post article reported that "local officials often resisted proposals to protect their communities from storms because they did not want to pay their share of federal projects". However, this claim was refuted in an August 2015 report published in Water Policy, the official journal of the World Water Council. The authors concluded, "We have not uncovered any information that would suggest that the members of the OLB who served on the Engineering Committee or the OLD staff engineers behaved irresponsibly or in a manner that did not place the interests of the city residents at the forefront..."
In June 2006, General Strock accepted responsibility on behalf of the Corps for the failure of the flood protection, calling it "a system in name only." Faulty design specifications and incomplete or substandard construction of levee segments were contributing factors in the failure of flood protection.
In April 2007, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) began referring to the flooding as the worst engineering catastrophe in US history. On 1 June 2007, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued its External Peer Review (ERP) report, the peer review of the Corps-sponsored IPET and also an accompanying press release. However, the press release was criticized because it contained information that was not present in the report, included information that conflicted with the report, and minimized the Army Corps' involvement in the catastrophe. The press release stated, "Even without breaching, Hurricane Katrina’s rainfall and surge over topping would have caused extensive and severe flooding—and the worst loss of life and property loss ever experienced in New Orleans". Meanwhile, the ERP report stated that had levees and pump stations not failed, "far less property loss would have occurred, and nearly two-thirds of deaths could have been avoided".
On July 9, 2007, retired Lt. G. Elvin "Vald" Heiberg III stated in a letter to the New Orleans Times Picayune that he should be blamed for the Katrina disaster. He said that as Commander of the New Orleans District and later as the Commander of the Corps of Engineers in the mid-1980s, he gave in to local interests—notably, Save Our Wetlands— too easily after various legal challenges. However, law professors Thomas McGarity and Douglas Kysar, in their article highlighting the 'hazards of hindsight analysis,’ put the process under the microscope and concluded that the corps had decided to build what locals preferred. The corps had not been forced to do anything against its will.
The IPET draft findings indicate that;
In October 2007, Dr. Ray Seed, University of California-Berkeley civil engineering professor and ASCE member, submitted an ethics complaint to the ASCE alleging that, with the help of the ASCE, the Corps sought to minimize its mistakes in the flooding and intimidate anyone who tried to intervene and delay the final results until public attention had turned elsewhere. The corps acknowledged receiving a copy of the letter but has refused to comment until after the ASCE's Committee on Professional Conduct (CPC), led by Rich Hovey, comments on the complaint. It took over a year for the ASCE to announce the results of the CPC. When the results of the internal ethics investigation were announced, the ASCE panel did not file any charges of ethical misconduct against any of its staffers. They blamed their errors in their June press release on "staff level and not by review panel members."
An external task force led by retired congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R–NY) also conducted an investigation.
Boehlert's task force was assembled at the request of ASCE in response to Dr. Seed's ethics complaint and a video produced by Levees.Org spoofing the apparent conflict of interest. The task force consisted of members from the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the American Water Works Association.
The task force's report criticized how ASCE conducts its peer reviews and recommended improvements. Most notable throughout the document was the inadequate "consideration of real or perceived conflict of interest". The task force acknowledged that the "potential conflicts of interest in ASCE's engineering review process are not unique to ASCE and can be addressed through procedures utilized by many government agencies charged with providing unbiased assessments to the public". Mr. Boehlert's task force also praised ASCE by writing, saying that "ASCE has long been respected for its investigatory skill and expertise, and its work on assessments is held in high regard by those in the engineering profession. The Task Force believes ASCE remains the best option for conducting post-disaster engineering assessments."
The grassroots group, Levees.Org, claimed that the IPET investigation and an expert review panel (ERP) convened by ASCE lacked credibility because of the involvement and management of the Corps of Engineers. The group contended that the ERP validating the IPET process was an apparent conflict of interest because the Corps selected the ASCE, directly paid the ASCE over $2 million, and awarded the panel members Outstanding Civilian Service Medals (OCSM) before their work was complete. Levees.Org was not successful in convincing members of Congress to create an independent levee investigation commission.
Lawsuits against the Corps in New Orleans In March 2007, the City of New Orleans filed a $77 billion claim against the USACE for damages sustained from faulty levee construction and resultant flooding during Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of thousands of individual claims were also received in the New Orleans branch office of the USACE. In addition to the City of New Orleans, other claimants include Entergy New Orleans, the city's now-bankrupt electric utility, and the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board.
In February 2007, the U.S. District Court ruled that the Flood Control Act of 1928 did not apply to cases involving navigational projects but that the Corps may be sued over alleged defects in its Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet navigation channel.
In January 2008, the District Court ruled that even though the US Army Corps of Engineers was negligent and derelict in their duty to provide flood protection for the citizens of New Orleans, it was compelled to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed against the Corps for levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina due to FCA 1928, which protects the federal government from lawsuits over flood control projects. The case was not appealed.
In November 2009, the US District Court for Eastern Louisiana held the US Army Corps of Engineers responsible for the flooding from the two east IHNC levee breaches (and dozens of others) because the federal agency failed to properly maintain the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). As of June 2011, the federal government has appealed the ruling.
In April 2010, scholars with the Louisiana State Office of Historic Preservation approved the text for a Historic Plaque for the 17th Street Canal. After receiving permission from city agencies and the Corps of Engineers, the flood protection group Levees.Org installed the Plaque at ground zero, on New Orleans city property, in the Lakeview neighborhood.
The text of the plaque read as follows:
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