The Army Corps of Engineers prefers to call it a 'risk reduction system.' The new system is designed to withstand a 100-year hurricane or a storm that has a 1 percent chance of occurring each year, and to significantly reduce flooding from a 500-year cyclone. The new and permanent pump house is still under construction in the distance. Bernard, he just means without proper funding it won't be as effective.Ī maintenance worker watches water pour out of the temporary outflow pipes at the pumping station for the 17th Street Canal in the Orleans Levee District. He doesn't really mean no flood protection for St. The citizens decide they don't want to have flood protection, then we're not going to have flood protection.' 'This is a country that's run by the citizens. That's a pound of crawfish in April,' Estopinal says, frustration evident in his voice. 'We're talking about $5 a month to the average taxpayer. Bernard Parish, voters have twice voted against raising their taxes to pay for better hurricane protection. The Corps has agreed, in theory, to pay for a portion of its upkeep, but most of the cost is supposed to fall to local government. Now that the flood control system is nearly finished, Washington and Baton Rouge are arm-wrestling over who will pay to maintain it. 'If you don't maintain them properly and pay attention to them on a regular basis, they will deteriorate and then when a storm comes they will not function.' 'You can't just build it and leave it,' he says.

That doesn't include 200 miles of levees that have to be constantly inspected, mowed and periodically raised because of natural subsidence. Estopinal estimates this year it will cost about $2 million just to maintain the massive surge wall. He's holding onto his Panama hat as the powerboat he's riding in skims along the water, scaring up white egrets. The numbers are mind-boggling,' says Steve Estopinal, the outgoing president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East. It's in Corps dollars, so it's like Monopoly money. 'I think this surge barrier here was $1.7 billion. The new pump stations and closure structures have safe houses for workers built to withstand 250 mph winds, with air-conditioning and enough provisions to last a week.Ī tug and barge pass through the open flood gates at the 1.8-mile-long Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, which is part of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority. I said, 'We gotta get the hell outta here.' ' The third night they was like B-29s in the window and the water was goin' septic. 'The first night the mosquitoes wasn't too bad,' he said in a thick New Orleans accent. He was interviewed a few days after the storm. Ricky Ray was a pump operator with the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board who heroically stayed at his post. The old pump houses, some more than a century old, were considered so vulnerable that some workers freaked out and abandoned them when the water rose during Katrina. They've also updated pumping stations that are essential to de-water a flooded city.

In the past decade, the Corps has paid to strengthen 350 miles of hurricane barriers and built massive new flood gates using better construction materials and more advanced computer storm modeling. The ring of protection around New Orleans is a vast improvement over the old system of federal levees and flood walls that failed catastrophically during Katrina. It can fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in three seconds.' 'It consists of the largest pump station in the world.

'This structure cost approximately $1.1 billion,' Maclay boasts. During a flood event, a water gate nearly as long as a football field slowly shuts and 11 behemoth diesel engines kick on to pump water out of Jefferson Parish. It's one of the state entities created after Katrina to consolidate and improve flood control.Ī tugboat cruises up the Intracoastal Waterway through a giant concrete and steel structure called the West Closure Complex that is one of the engineering marvels of the new system. There is no comparison since before Katrina and today,' says Susan Maclay, president of Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - West. Locals say their low-lying city finally has the storm defenses it should have had before Katrina, which killed hundreds and caused billions in property losses. Army Corps of Engineers has nearly completed one of the world's most remarkable hurricane protection systems to encircle New Orleans. In the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. 30, 2005, a day after Hurricane Katrina tore through the city Water spills into New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward through a failed floodwall along the Industrial Canal on Aug.

Flood barrier