New Orleans’ Rebuilt Levees “Riddled With Flaws”

During a recent inspection of the levee system with National Geographic magazine, engineering professor Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, found multiple weak spots.

(See an interactive map of the weak spots).

The most serious flaws turned up in the rebuilt levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel.

The channel’s levees had failed in more than 20 places when Katrina’s storm surge pounded them, leading to devastating flooding in the Louisiana city’s Lower Ninth Ward and in St. Bernard Parish, which borders the city to the southeast.

Bea found several areas where rainstorms have already eroded the newly rebuilt levees, particularly where they consist of a core of sandy and muddy soils topped with a cap of Mississippi clay.

“It’s like icing on the top of angel food cake,” Bea said. “These levees will not be here if you put a Katrina surge against them.”

(Watch aerial video of “angel food cake” levees.)

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