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Hurricane Katrina

Levees met specs, new tests show

NEW ORLEANS - Eight sections of steel sheet pilings pulled from a failed New Orleans levee Tuesday appeared to meet design specifications for size and depth, contradicting earlier tests.

The sheet pilings were removed as part of an investigation into why the flood wall at the 17th Street Canal failed, contributing to floods that covered 80 percent of the city when Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29.

Initial testing by sonar had indicated the pilings were only driven to about 10 feet below sea level, even though the design called for the steel reinforcements to be driven down to 17.5 feet below sea level.

The discrepancy fueled suspicion of wrongdoing in the building of the failed flood wall, attracting criminal investigators to the work site. The U.S. attorney, the state attorney general and the local district attorney all have launched investigations into the building and maintenance of the levees.

After pulling and measuring the pilings, officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expressed a measure of relief, since the Corps was responsible for ensuring the construction matched the approved design when the flood wall was built in the early 1990s.

But if the flood wall was built to specifications, as the latest inspection indicated, the next question will be whether the design was faulty.

"We need to look at all the failure mechanisms because obviously something did happen here and each piece of the puzzle helps us determine what happened," said Col. Lewis Setliff, commander of the task force restoring about 350 miles of hurricane protection levees in the New Orleans area.

Louisiana State University computer models have indicated that the levee and flood wall, even if built as designed, would fail if the water in the canal rose to nearly 12 feet above sea level, as water marks on the flood wall indicated it had during Katrina.

That was in part because the bottom of the canal was a foot lower than the bottom of the sheet piling, meaning water would be able to seep from the canal to the dry side of the levee, loosening the soil enough to cause the levee to slide and undermine the flood wall.

University of California at Berkeley professor Ray Seed, part of a National Science Foundation team studying the levees, said the construction of the flood wall looked fine to him.

"The issue here isn't structural, or the piles," Seed said. "The issue here is the foundation," meaning the earthen material in the levee beneath the flood wall.

Seed said a preliminary analysis of soil borings taken near the breach indicate that the strength of the soil, which included sand and peat, was "very low."

"You could hypothesize that the embankment might have been expected to slide sideways . . . since it slid sideways," Seed said.

The length of the sections pulled all exceeded 23 feet. About 6 feet of the sheet piling was above sea level, leaving a little more than 17 feet below sea level - in accordance with design specifications.

WASHINGTON - Gulf Coast lawmakers scrambled Tuesday to gain as much Hurricane Katrina aid as possible before Congress goes home, including a $35-billion proposal to repair levees, support schools and rebuild the region.

Housing needs and tax breaks were high on lawmakers' lists.

So far, Congress has provided $62-billion for the battered gulf states. The fund was for recovery costs like clearing debris, temporary housing and direct aid to victims. President Bush has proposed using $17-billion of it to repair damaged facilities.

NEW ORLEANS - Some Hurricane Katrina evacuees stuck in unfamiliar surroundings across the United States are in no mood to party, and they are decrying the city's plans to hold a Mardi Gras celebration in February.

"This is not the time for fun. This is the time to put people's lives back on track," said Lillie Antoine, 51, who fled New Orleans and is living in Tulsa, Okla.

City officials said last month that New Orleans would hold an abbreviated Mardi Gras celebration to show the world the city is on its way back.

Critics say the party preparations are insensitive.

"I just think it sends the wrong message to have a celebration when people are not back in their houses," said Ernest Johnson, the Louisiana president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

[Last modified December 14, 2005, 00:15:15]