NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Documents obtained by the New Orleans Times-Picayune suggest engineers made at least two critical mistakes in levee design in 1990.
The paper trail involves the 17th Street Canal. It also shows the regional office of the Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg questioned the design but did not pursue the issue when the New Orleans office replied decisions were based on "engineering judgment."
Both of the mistakes involved overly optimistic assessments of soil strength.
The newspaper suggested, while its documents involve only the 17th Street Canal, similar errors probably led to the collapse of levees along the Industrial and London Avenue canals. Levees failed on all three after Hurricane Katrina.
Robert Bea, a University of California professor and member of the National Science Foundation team studying the levee failure, said the Corps made a third critical mistake by accepting the design done by outside engineers. He called the "engineering judgment" response to Vicksburg's concern a "red flag" that should have led officials to demand backup data.
