Can New Orleans' Revamped Levee System Withstand Next Storm?

As powerful as Hurricane Katrina was when it landed east of New Orleans five years ago, the city wasn't submerged immediately. Heavy flooding began overnight, as a storm surge and waves overwhelmed a 350-mile-long network of levees, flood walls, pumps, gates and canals that were supposed to protect the city and parts of the surrounding area.

Buzz FacebookTwitterDiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousThe levees gave way. Eighty percent of the metropolitan area was submerged.

MAN: This scene is being replayed throughout this city, everywhere, people waving frantically, trying to get our attention and our help. It's just such a helpless feeling.

JEFFREY BROWN: In the aftermath, new and urgent questions arose: How much of This disaster was natural and how much manmade, as it became clear that the levee system built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was flawed and deeply inadequate?

Engineers pointed to a series of problems, including shoddy construction of some levees. In 2006, civil engineer Bob Bea talked to Betty Ann Bowser about one levee located near a shipping canal popularly known as Mr. Go.

BOB BEA, Civil Engineer, University of California, Berkeley: It was badly flawed at concept, design, construction. Then we followed that into operations and then maintenance, and it caught up with us.

We've actually met and talked with the engineers that were on the site at the time they built this levee. And, at that time, they knew they were using dredge spoil from the construction of Mr. Go.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Which is below their standards?

BOB BEA: Is below their standards.

JEFFREY BROWN: In a sweeping 6,000-page report that same year, the Army Corps of Engineers admitted that hurricane protection system for Southeast Louisiana had been -- quote -- "a system in name only."

In response, Congress ordered the Corps to devise a new protection plan, a $15 billion project that is well under way and is expected to be finished next year. Among much else, new levees are built with steadier walls, walls shaped like a T. that are braced more strongly into the ground.