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Levees not designed for sinking city
By UPI Staff
United Press International
May 2, 2006

NEW ORLEANS (UPI) -- New Orleans levees completed in the 1980s and 1990s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were not designed for a sinking city, a report says.

The design decision was made in 1985 by Frederick Chatry, then the head of engineering for the New Orleans district, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.

The corps was in the midst of a massive project building levees and flood walls that had been authorized by Congress in 1965. In 1985, the U.S. Geodetic Survey released a new map that put the baseline elevation of New Orleans as much as a foot lower.

Instead of going back to Congress for more money, Chatry decided that parts of the project that were already under way would be built to the old design specifications and using the old baseline for ground level. That meant they were as much as a foot lower than if the new baseline had been used.

"The public never got the protection they thought they were getting, it gave them a false sense of security, and it caught up with them last year," said the former head of the survey section, Wayne Weiser.

Other former colleagues say that Chatry, who has since died, may have thought it was better to get the project completed than to do re-engineering that could have added years to the schedule.

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