As Rita heads toward the Gulf coast as a Category 4 storm, both the Washington Post (“Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding”) and the New York Times (“Design Shortcomings Seen in New Orleans Flood Walls”) run stories today that blame the levee breaches in New Orleans on design faults, with the Post reporting that

Louisiana’s top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina’s storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city’s flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.

The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina’s surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals—and the flooding of most of New Orleans

…and the Times is careful to lay blame at the federal level:

As a result of federal budget constraints, the walls were never tested for their ability to withstand the cascades of lake water that rushed up to, or over, their tops as storm waves pulsed through the canals on Aug. 29, corps and local officials say.

But as NRO’s Rich Lowry relates, via an emailer:

The scandal may well center on the contractor(s) who did the 17th Street Canal work and London Avenue work which was done from about 1999/2000 to the early in 2005. With all of the levee board cronies I fear that is the issue rather than Army Corps negligence or incompetence. If those breaches did not occur, Hurricane Katrina’s damage would have been similar to Hurricane Betsy in 1965—severe damage and flooding in Saint Bernard and the Lower Ninth Ward and other low lying areas of the City of New Orleans, (The one exception to his was Plaquemine Parish which was destroyed on the east bank in Katrina due to the category 4 winds and storm surge) and Mississippi’s destruction would be the main story

Later, Lowry, who last week wrote a column addressing the flood wall failures (in which former representative Bob Livingston (R-La.), who helped lead the charge for Corps projects in Louisiana when he chaired the House Appropriations Committee, noted that the earthen levees along Lake Pontchartrain had all held, while the concrete floodwalls had failed) publishes a second email from his flood wall expert that digs a bit deeper into the Times story:

[...] I just read the article and is it interesting that the fourth paragraph (above the fold) cryptically mentions “budget constraints,” but when you get to the jump page it has several worthy items that have nothing to do with funding from Washington. If one does not read the entire article you might think that lack of federal funds is a key reason for the breaches in New Orleans. First, on the bottom of the first column, the article refers to using inverted T walls in the corps flood manual “but that option was not considered because T walls are more expensive, REQUIRED A BROAD BASE OF DENSE SOIL FOR SUPPORT AND WERE NOT NECESSARILY STRONGER.” (emphasis mine). This means you need more land for earthen structures to do a T wall that has been resisted by local property owners and elected officials in New Orleans near the lakefront, the Ninth Ward and Saint Bernard dating from Hurricane Betsy’s aftermath in 1965 all the way until the present. The last phrase about strength is puzzling because it seems to contradict the Corps (and independent assessments) own assessment that earthen structures are superior to concrete walls. Additionally, the article correctly points out that post-Betsy efforts at the local level were delayed by environmental litigation in the 1970’s (and refusal to move strucures to allow for larger earthen structures) resulting in the Corps and the Congressional delegation shifting to other approaches, including flood walls. Finally, I would be wary of any comments by officials from the Orleans Levee Board because they would appear to bear a growing amount of responsibility for the breaches in Orleans Parish.

[my emphasis]

Indeed.  Here’s the nut, from the Times (near the end of the article):

A surge from Lake Pontchartrain was the catastrophic situation that the corps had been guarding against since Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago. Initially, the corps wanted to build a giant barrier to keep water from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching Lake Pontchartrain and flooding the canals.

That project was delayed by lawsuits from environmental groups that contended the corps had failed to study ecological effects. By the late 1970’s, the corps abandoned that approach and began raising levees along the lake and the Mississippi and adding flood walls on the canals[…]

[…]

Max Hearn, executive director of the Orleans Levee District, said that if the federal government was now ready to pay for Category 5 protection, it seemed unlikely that the flood wall system could be upgraded to that level.

But Mr. Hearn said the only answer might be the construction of flood gates designed to limit a hurricane surge in Lake Pontchartrain – the same idea that was considered and dropped in the 1970’s.

[my emphasis]

Richard Wagner, Commander of the ACoE—appearing on FOXNews’ “Dayside” just moments ago—says that his people are as interested in the reports of flood wall failures as anyone, though the official ACoE position still seems to be that Katrina overtopped floodwalls. 

It is worth noting, however, that, as Wagner points out, the local levee board is responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the levees.

The Post story concludes:

The Corps has not identified the contractors who built the floodgates that failed; Paul Johnston said there will be a full investigation into the breaches.

Congress authorizes flood- control projects—after receiving recommendations from the Corps—and the Corps oversees their design and construction.

John M. Barry—who criticized the Corps in “Rising Tide,” a history of the Mississippi River flood of 1927—said that if Katrina did not exceed the design capacity of the New Orleans levees, the federal government may bear ultimate responsibility for this disaster.

“If this is true, then the loss of life and the devastation in much of New Orleans is no more a natural disaster than a surgeon killing a patient by failing to suture an artery would be a natural death,” Barry said. “And that surgeon would be culpable.”

Which, if both Mr Barry and the Times story are correct, does it not follow that a combination of environmental litigation and local resistance by New Orleans property owners and politicians prevented the ACoE from obtaining the land necessary to do a T wall from earthen structures?

The follow-up investigation should be interesting.  But, given the way the stories were framed today (which concentrated attention on federal budgetary constraints and potential ACoE incompetence or negligence), I’d look for many in the media to bury the lede.