NOLA: Plus or Minus?

This is just nuts. NOLA is not protected for another 4 or 5 feet, but the reverse. Talk about a whole bunch of stupid…

Harry Shearer:

Another landmark in the history of New Orleans' relationship with the US Army Corps of Engineers was reached today, according to Mark Schleifstein in the Times-Picayune. The new gates and levee repairs by the Corps, which the agency announced with great fanfare had given between 4 and 5 feet of additional flood protection to the Lakeview and Old Metairie neighborhoods, both inundated when the floodwalls breached after Katrina, are, it now appears, giving almost no additional protection. The problem: a minus sign that should have been a plus sign. And still the Congress refuses to mandate independent peer review for the Corps' work in engineering and building structures upon which millions of people depend for their safety.

From the TP piece:

In June, the Army Corps of Engineers proudly announced that new gates and levee repairs meant residents returning to Lakeview and Old Metairie would see floodwaters reduced by up to 5 1/2 feet if the city were hit by a 100-year hurricane.

They were off by 5 feet.

The reason? The Lakeview data got fouled up when somebody put a minus sign in a calculation that called for a plus sign, Ed Link, leader of the corps-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, said Friday. The Old Metairie errors stemmed from faulty assumptions about the way water would move into and out of the neighborhood from surrounding areas, Link said.

In other words, flood protection in Lakeview and Old Metairie has hardly improved at all since the neighborhoods drowned in the 2005 flood -- despite the public celebrations of corps officials and others in releasing the maps on Hurricane Katrina's second anniversary.

Click on the TP link above or go this way.

More Later.

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