Paper 3

Cary Pagett
Mr. Davidson
English 102
15 November 2007
Bad Dictions Making
As a Construction Engineering Technology major I hope to one day be able to build homes and buildings that everyone can use and enjoy. Safety would be my first and foremost concern. This almost comes to seem to be the opposite for the United States Army Corps of Engineers when they were put in charge of building and maintaining the storm protection system of New Orleans. They have failed in making the levees strong enough to protect us from a hurricane that put my city under water and killed millions. It is time to take action on these problems.
Being a New Orleans citizen I was born and raised here just as every New Orleans citizen has been. This is why I was out raged to hear about how the United States Army Corps of Engineers were warned about the protection system’s not being able to hold up to certain storms and than doing nothing to fix these problems. As said in the article Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding, “the corps had failed to take into account the tendency of the local soil over time, leaving some sections of the levee lower than they should have been. The corps did not re-examine the heights of levees even after it had been warned about the degree of subsidence.” They should learn to listen to warnings brought to them by others. Even though it might not have been possible to fix the system completely; actions could have been taken toward trying to fix the problems as much as possible. The United States Corps of Engineers are in the wrong for what happened and it’s good that they admitted it. According to the article Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding, “the Army Corps of Engineers concludes that the levees it built in the city were an incomplete patchwork of protection, containing flaws in design and construction and not built to handle a storm anywhere near the strength of Hurricane Katrina.” No one could have predicted the amount of damage Katrina brought upon New Orleans. But that still does not mean that the flood protection system was fine not being kept up and made stronger.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers has claimed that they are doing everything they can to get the levees back to what they were and better than what they were before. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk:
After two years and more than a billion dollars spent by the Army Corps of Engineers…The entire flood system still provides much less protection than New Orleans needs, and the pre-Katrina patchwork of levees, floodwalls and gates that a Corps of Engineers investigation called “a system in name only” is still just that. The corps has strengthened miles of floodwalls, but not always in places where people live.
The United States Corps of Engineers are being careless and irresponsible with the type of work they are doing. They make it seem as if they do not care about any of the problems their systems have made. According to the article Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding, “Lt. Gen. A. Strock,… “we missed something in the design,” particularly in the construction of the drainage canal floodwalls that caused so much of the flooding.”
The rebuilding of the levees are being done sloppy and inaccurately to the point where they are just wasting their time with what they have done so far. They rush into replacing and repairing systems without double checking the quality of work that they are doing in their jobs. The United States Army Corps of Engineers ARE rebuilding the levees but they are NOT doing it in the right way or with the right materials. According to the article Reconstruction, “…contractors are fixing breaches and scoured areas with materials contaminated by organic matter and lacking adequate clay content to resist erosion. “The kind of materials they are working with to repair the levees are the same materials that breached’.” They are trying to rebuild the levees to fast and doing it anyway possible even if that means building something that will fail once again. This should not be acceptable for the last line of defense against “Mother Nature”. If they are allowed to keep rebuilding parts of our levees this way our city will never be able to survive. The levees will continue to break under the pressure of storms and never be safe, unless we do something about this careless kind of work they are doing for us.
The city of New Orleans is even holding the United States Army Corps of Engineers liable for the damage done to the city resulting from hurricane Katrina. Our government organizations have all the responsibility of keeping everything running smoothly. They are put in those roles of power for a reason. This is a huge deal that the corps could not do there job in protecting us from this type of storm but they seem to take it so lightly. This is why penalizing them seems to be the only way to get through to them and make them listen. So they can once again realize the importance of them taking their jobs seriously. According to the article New Orleans Files Claim Against Corps For Billions:
The City of New Orleans filed a $77 billion damage claim against the federal government…Normally, federal law does not allow suits for damages resulting from the failures of flood-control projects. But on Feb. 2, Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of Federal District Court in New Orleans ruled that at least one flooding source, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, might be considered a navigation channel and not a flood-control project. Critics of the corps faulted the outlet, known as Mr. Go, for much of the flooding in eastern New Orleans.
One of the man made channels made by the United States Army Corps of Engineers was one of the big causes of flooding in New Orleans. This just goes to show the level of intelligence the corps is showing toward trying to protect this city. They build levees to keep water out of the city yet one of their own channels that they dug brought most of the water in.
This city is having such a hard time getting people to come back and rebuild because of when the corps says it can have the levees ready. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City still at Risk:
The corps has said that proposals from contractors for doing so are on their way, but that work, too, may not be complete before 2011. Without a strong rampart of protection against storms, New Orleans will have a hard time persuading its far-flung residents and businesses to return and rebuild. Matt McBride, an engineer who became an anti-corps gadfly on flood-protection issues, left the city along with his wife after deciding he simply did not trust the new system.
Who could blame Mr. McBride and his wife for not trusting the new flood-protection system and wanting to leave the city to live somewhere else. Until they can get the flood-protection system to protect us against any storm; this city is going to have a hard time convincing people in flood prone areas to move back. In the long run this will hurt this city’s economy.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers seems to be trying to hide certain details or saying some things are done when they appear not to be. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk, “But community activists say they suspect that the corps has not yet fully fixed the problems.” They are talking about how the pumps may still not be working at full capacity as they should be. This seems to be the way a lot of the projects that the Army Corps of Engineers have been working on for the past few years are turning out. The corps seems to be completing certain projects only to a certain degree just to make people think that they are getting things done. So they can get the city of New Orleans off their back about finishing projects.
The Corps was in such a rush to get projects done before the hurricane season that it messed some parts of the plan up. They did not think about getting jobs done the right way, yet instead they just wanted to get every thing done and get it done in a hurry. I realize that everyone wants the work done A.S.A.P. but this does not excuse the corps from doing work the right way. According to the article One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk:
Then there are the new pumps at the mouths of the city’s main drainage canals, which will be turned on if the huge new floodgates have to be closed to keep out lake water in a storm. Two reports said that the pumps, ordered in a rush of planning before the 2006 storm season, were a troubled operation from the start, and that if a storm had hit in the first year after Hurricane Katrina, severe flooding could have occurred.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers do not seem to know what they are doing. They make careless mistakes when they are trying to rush to get everything done in a hurry. According to the article Flood Control:
In its rush to restore New Orleans’ hurricane protection system to pre-Katrina levels by the 2006 hurricane season and then rapidly increase pump capacity at the city’s outfall canals by the 2007 season, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to follow adequate business management, technical review and procurement processes.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers can not seem to get anything right, right now. For the amount of responsibility they have in their hands they do not seem to be doing a very good job regulating the quality of work their workers do. The corps ignored warnings that the levees needed to be repaired because of the sinking soil and the eroding materials they used to build them. They even admitted to knowing that the flood-protection system had flaws in the design and construction of it. Along with admitting to knowing that the storm protection system would not stand up to a storm anywhere near to the strength of Hurricane Katrina. They have been working on the system for over two years now and still are not even up to the pre-Katrina standards. The corps has strengthened much of the levees but in places where there are no homes. Parts of the levees they have repaired are being repaired to the point where they will just break once again because of careless construction and the use of the wrong materials. A law suit was filed against the Corps of Engineers for building a canal (“Mr. Go”) that was said to have funneled water into the city instead of helping to get it out. They say that the flood-protection system will not be strong enough to protect against category five storms until 2011. The corps has tried to claim that some projects are done completely when they are obviously not and could put the city in danger. There were some projects that were rushed so much that they were done incorrectly and put the whole city in danger. The United States Army Corps of Engineers has a long way to come before they will be able to gain the trust of the citizens of New Orleans once again.
I believe that as a citizen of New Orleans that everyone should chip in to help out with trying to fix these problems. I believe that the Army Corps of Engineers need to do their job better. They need to do more in making shore that the work they do and the materials they use are being done to proper standards.




Works Cited
Bergeron, Angelle. "Internal Corps Report Cites Procurement Flaws." ENR: Engineering News-Record 258.22 (18 June 2007): 13-13. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Schwartz, John. "One Billion Dollars Later, a City Still at Risk. (Cover story)." New York Times 156.54039 (17 Aug. 2007): A1-A16. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Eaton, Leslie. "New Orleans Files Claim Against Corps For Billions." New York Times 156.53872 (03 Mar. 2007): A12-A12. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Schwartz, John. "Army Builders Accept Blame Over Flooding." New York Times 155.53598 (02 June 2006): A1-A19. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .
Sawyer, Tom. "Investigators Question Levee Repair Work, Corps Defends It." ENR: Engineering News-Record 256.8 (27 Feb. 2006): 14-14. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 20 October 2007. .