SmashMouth

An $8 billion re-engineered levee system came on line for hurricane season, six years after its predecessor failed miserably to protect the area from Hurricane Katrina. A chastened Army Corps of Engineers admitted that design, construction and maintenance flaws caused the old system to fail.


The Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, also called The Great Wall of Louisiana, is a nearly two-mile-long, 26-foot-high barrier to prevent the kind of flooding that ravaged the Lower 9th Ward.
2011: New hurricane levee system is in place gallery (9 photos)


The Corps of Engineers worked feverishly to meet a 2011 congressional deadline to have a new, stronger system in place to protect the area from a 100-year storm.
Congress assigned the corps to oversee New Orleans hurricane protection after Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Forty years later, the corps acknowledged that the patchwork of walls and levees was "a system in name only.” It took the corps 10 months, but it finally admitted that its design for the failed floodwalls on the 17th Street and London Avenue canals was faulty. With the houses of many of its employees flooded, the corps vowed to get the new system right.
Levees failed in Katrina because they were made from porous soils. Millions of tons of heavy clay were dug out from across the region to fix and raise old levees and build new ones on the West Bank and in the River Parishes. Walls and levees that breached were replaced with walls with foundations 70 or more feet deep.
The keys to the new system are two new structures designed to keep the east and west banks protected from storm surge. The Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, also called The Great Wall of Louisiana, is a nearly two-mile-long, 26-foot-high barrier to prevent the kind of flooding that ravaged the Lower 9th Ward. The West Closure Complex in Belle Chasse will prevent the Harvey Canal from inundating the West Bank. Giant pumps are used to get rainwater runoff past the barrier.
Parishes got into the act by building safehouses to keep drainage pumps powered and staffed during hurricanes. The Corps of Engineers will still spend billions to armor new levees and build permanent gates and pumps at four New Orleans drainage canals.

read more

SmashMouth

Is it really ready?

QBREES9

Wow 8 billion dollars it better work.

Halo

It is and it went online July of 2011.

It's the largest project in the history of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers EVER!

QBREES9

I hope ya'll never have to use it.