U.S. Water News Online
NEW ORLEANS -- Area levees that appeared to be undamaged after Hurricane Katrina are getting another inspection, this time by private contractors hired by the Army Corps of Engineers.
"Although our guys have been out there looking since shortly after Katrina, this is a reassessment of everything and, to some degree, an inventory of the entire system," corps spokesman Rob Brown said. "We already know about the bad spots and some of the more moderately bad spots, but this is the fine tooth comb approach that will tell us everything and document it."
The new inspections come after independent teams of engineers, including the American Society of Civil Engineers, expressed serious concern that findings at spots where levees burst indicate engineering mistakes that could potentially plague the entire system.
"This assessment will help us address our own concerns about the system we built and live behind every day, and it will also address the concerns of the ASCE and others," Brown said.
Brown said the contractors have been asked to walk the entire 350 miles of the hurricane protection system; confirm existing elevations of every flood wall, levee, and gate; and conduct soil analyses in all areas where levees or flood walls show signs of distress.
"The results of this evaluation will tell us exactly what else we need to do," said Al Naomi, corps senior project manager of the Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity hurricane protection project.
The four companies chosen by the corps to do the work include: AIMS Group Inc. and Brown, Cunningham, Gannuch, Brown, both of Metairie; HNTB Corp. of Baton Rouge; and Arcadis G & M Inc., of Highlands Park, Colorado.
Contracts were negotiated earlier this month, and all four companies began field work this week, Brown said.
Ivor Van Heerden, assistant director of the LSU Hurricane Center and a member of the Team Louisiana group that has been probing levee failures independent of the corps, commended the corps for hiring the contractors and said he hoped all deficiencies will be reported when they are detected and not when the entire the project is finished.
"Neither Team Louisiana nor the Berkeley group had the money to do such an inch-by-inch review, but we all agreed that it was needed because people must know just how safe the system is in order to determine how much risk they are willing to assume," Van Heerden said. "One would hope that that tradition of openness continues as the corps and its contractors move forward with this new assessment."
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