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Text Box: Oil and gas production in the marshes and in the Gulf are supported by boats, barges, and pipelines. Channels and canals were dredged and forced into the marshes so that the boats and barges could get from place to place in a timely manner. This was also done so that pipelines could be laid. The canals and channels damaged the marshes and swamps along virtually all of the coast of Louisiana (From Mississippi to Texas), and also provided ready access for Gulf water to enter the marshes and swamps and all the land inland from the marshes and swamps. Gulf water, being salt water, kills all vegetation in marshes and swamps, allowing the soil to was away. The marshes and swamps which surround New Orleans and of which Saint Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes are composed, and the offshore barrier islands, had therefore been heavily damaged by lack of silt deposits from the Mississippi River, and by intrusion of Gulf of Mexico salt water through the canals built to facilitate the needs of the oil and gas industry. These marshes, swamps, and barrier islands act as buffers protecting that which is inland from the coast against hurricanes. Their weakening and destruction over the past one hundred years left everything inland from the coast more vulnerable - including New Orleans, and the sugar cane, rice, citrus, cattle and produce portions of Louisiana within fifty to one hundred miles of the coast. Katrina’s interior low pressure raised the level of the water within the eye of the hurricane to many feet above sea level. Waves inside the eye increased the height of the water. Thus a block (not a wall, but a block) of water which was “only” twenty feet high in some places and possibly as high as fifty feet in other places, came ashore at the speed at which the hurricane was traveling (not the speed of the winds - 150 MPH - but the speed at which the storm was traveling across the water, 6 to 10 MPH). This block of water was possibly as thick as the interior of the

Text Box: storm, and stretched many miles along the coast (all of Mississippi and of Louisiana, and virtually from Alabama to Texas). On the coast itself this block of water smashed everything in its path. As the block of water traveled inland, it broke up but remained strong enough to carry far inland almost everything it had inundated. Except for tree stumps and things rooted in the ground and things caught up in that debris, what was not carried inland was carried out to sea by the returning water. In the New Orleans area, the water traveled up a shipping channel named The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (the MRGO), creating a block of water (not a wall, but a block) thirty feet high. The water spilled over the levees of the MRGO flooding Saint Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans on one side, and New Orleans East on the other side. The levees were around twelve feet high, so they were easily topped. As the block of water traveled through the MRGO it increased in speed since the water which was within the canal was compressed by the sides of the canal. This increase in speed strengthened the force of the water as it slammed into levees, houses, and people. The water also came into Lake Pontchartrain, and thence into the Industrial Canal at one end of New Orleans, and into the Seventeenth Street Canal at the other end of New Orleans. In the Industrial Canal the water overtopped the levees in some places, causing the levees to partially wash away on the land side of the levees as the water poured over the top of the levees, thus allowing a larger flow of water into the city and Saint Bernard Parish. On the Seventeenth Canal the levees had been reinforced with steel sheeting which extended seventeen and a half feet into the ground. When the sheeting was installed the canal was approximately nine feet in depth. Also, the soil in some places under and

Text Box: near the canal, at about fifteen or twenty feet deep, is composed of sand, which allows water to seep around it, creating a wash when pressure is increased. After the metal sheeting had been installed, the Orleans Parish Levee Board caused the canal to be dredged to a depth of approximately twenty feet, to increase the water flow out of the canal. This removed the clay bottom of the canal, allowing the water to more easily seep under the levees. It also made the depth of the canal lower than the sheet metal which had been placed in the levees to strengthen the levees. The water was now three feet deeper than the sheet metal. The beach sand composition of part of the subsoil under and near the canal provided a path through which the water could and did percolate, providing a path for the water to flow into the City, destabilizing the surface and causing it to collapse thus providing another path for water to enter the city. Annual inspections of the levees by Corps of Engineers officials and New Orleans Levee Board officials were more of a luncheon excuse. Indications of problems with the Seventeenth Street Canal levees, such as water seeping under the ground and into back yards, when reported by residents to officials, were investigated, and the water found not to be sewerage or drainage runoff from the streets, but salt water coming from Lake Pontchartrain into the canal. But nothing was done to further investigate the situation. At the Seventeenth Street Canal, the water seeped under the levees, rupturing the ground underneath the levees causing them to collapse, and the water inundated the city from the side opposite where it had been inundated by the water which came in through the MRGO. SOME PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS:

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