TECHNICAL PAPERS
May 1, 2008

Development of the New Orleans Flood Protection System prior to Hurricane Katrina

Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134, Issue 5

Abstract

The system of flood protection surrounding New Orleans and its adjoining parishes prior to Hurricane Katrina evolved over a period of 280years . The earliest drainage works sought to elevate the river’s natural levees and excavate drainage canals leading towards Bayou St. John, the only natural break across the Metairie-Gentilly distributary ridge. An extensive zone of Cypress Swamps occupied the levee flank depression between the ridge and Lake Pontchartrain. 58km of drainage canals were excavated across the natural levee backslope and through the swamp depressions bordering the lake between 1833 and 1878. These canals sought to drain the lower portions of the city, which suffered periodic outbreaks of yellow fever, which killed more than 100,000 people during the 19th century. The city has not suffered flooding from the Mississippi River since 1895, most damaging floods having emanated from hurricane surge off of Lake Pontchartrain. Since 1559, 177 hurricanes have struck the Louisiana coastline. A system of pump stations was constructed between 1895 and 1927, which pump water into the river, the lake, and adjacent bayous. The cypress swamps were replaced by the Lakeview and Gentilly residential districts, built after 1945. This old swamp zone has settled as much as 3+m since 1895. After 1927 the Army Corps of Engineers assumed a leadership role in providing flood control infrastructure, supervising the Mississippi River & Tributaries Project in 1931–1972. In 1955 the Corps role was expanded to include the City of New Orleans, which included maintaining capacity and freeboard of the old drainage canals. After a series of lawsuits between 1961 and 1977, the Corps was forced to employ concrete flood walls along the subsiding drainage canals. These walls were constructed in the 1990s, though some transition elements remained incomplete when Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.

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Acknowledgments

The writer is indebted to John T. McGill, Curator of the Williams Research Center of the Historic New Orleans Collection, Tony Shallat at Boise State University, Joseph Suyheda and Sherwood Gagliano, emeriti of Louisiana State University, and Ivor Van Heerden of the LSU Hurricane Center. The texts by Morgan (1971), Shallat (1994), Barry (1997), Reuss (1998), Campanella (2002), Lemmon et al. (2003), and Camillo and Pearcy (2006), were particularly valuable in unraveling the development of flood control infrastructure impacting New Orleans. Conor M. Watkins provided graphics support and crafted the maps used to illustrate this paper. This summary was made as part of the forensic investigation team led by University of California, Berkeley and funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. NSFCMS-0413327 and NSFCMS-0611632. Their assistance is kindly noted.

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Go to Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 134Issue 5May 2008
Pages: 602 - 617

History

Received: Dec 7, 2007
Accepted: Feb 4, 2008
Published online: May 1, 2008
Published in print: May 2008

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J. D. Rogers, M.ASCE [email protected]
K.F. Hasselmann Chair in Geological Engineering, Dept. of Geological Sciences and Engineering, 129 McNutt Hall, Missouri Univ. of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409. E-mail: [email protected]

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