By Cliff Montgomery – Nov. 20th, 2009
The U.S. government may end up paying billions of dollars in damages to New Orleans residents, now that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers’ faulty maintenance of a navigation channel allowed massive flooding to occur after Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval on Nov. 18th awarded seven plaintiffs a total of $720,000 for their suffering. But the ruling almost certainly will provide over 100,000 other individuals, government entities and businesses a more secure basis for collecting damages.
Judge Duval agreed with the residents–six individuals and one company–who argued that the Army Corps’ poor supervision of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet resulted in the flooding of New Orleans’ St. Bernard Parish and its neighboring Lower 9th Ward.
But the judge further ruled that the corps was not liable for the floods which invaded eastern New Orleans, where two plaintiffs resided.
The decision appeared to strike a chord in south Louisiana.
Several New Orleans residents have stated that the floods occurring shortly after Katrina–which hit the area on Aug. 29th, 2005–constituted a gross failure by the Army Corps to properly keep up the levee system.
“Total devastation could possibly have been avoided if something had been done,” plaintiff Tanya Smith told The Associated Press (AP).
“A lot of this stuff was preventable and they turned a deaf ear to it,” she added.
Smith, a registered nurse anesthetist, was one of those who lived near the channel. The court awarded Smith $317,000 for property damages. It was the largest award given to the plaintiffs.
Judge Duval released a scathing 156-page ruling, which flatly called the Army Corps’ poor maintenence of the channel a “monumental negligence.”
Duval added that the evidence had “utterly convinced” him that the corps’ lackluster oversight “doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width,” a matter that “created a more forceful frontal wave attack on the levee” that was supposed to protect the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard.
“The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so,” added Duval.
“Clearly the expression ‘talk is cheap’ applies here,” he stated.
Joe Bruno, a leading lawyer for the plaintiffs, told AP that Duval’s ruling is another proof that the Army Corps often fails to properly protect the city of New Orleans.
“It’s high time we look at the way these guys do business and do a full re-evaluation of the way it does business,” added Bruno.
He told AP that the government probably will appeal the decision.
But Judge Duval’s forceful rulings shouldn’t be that big a surprise. It appears that in at least some ways, the Army Corps already agrees with him.
A Washington Post article published in July 2007 stated that a commissioned Army Corps of Engineers report released at the time “details how Corps officials facing budget pressures cut millions from the construction of key flood walls by shrinking their support pilings.
“Under pressure from rising waters during Katrina, those walls toppled, causing much of the city flooding,” the Post added.
“According to the report,” the Post continued, “the Corps also pressed ahead with the plan authorized by Congress in 1965,” even after later data “about potential hurricane dangers indicated that the system provided less protection than promised.”
