Katrina suit blames river shipping channel

NEW ORLEANS, July 7 (UPI) -- Attorneys for Hurricane Katrina victims said they hope to pierce the U.S. government's veil of immunity by arguing a shipping channel caused damages.

The federal government is shielded by law from damage claims arising from the failure of flood levees constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but some New Orleans plaintiffs say it was the 1960s construction of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet shipping channel, not levee failures, that caused their homes to flood, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday.

Despite warnings before and after it was built by the corps that such a thing could happen, the channel -- used as a bypass for shipping traffic to the Gulf of Mexico -- acted as a funnel for Katrina's 2005 storm surge, shooting water upchannel and flooding eastern sections of the city, the newspaper says.

"Since 1958, the Army Corps was on written notice that the (channel) posed a serious threat to human life and property in Greater New Orleans," the suit reads.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled in May in New Orleans that the multibillion-dollar, class-action suit could proceed to trial.