Homes outside Levees proposed for buyouts by Corps

Storm surge from Hurricane Katrina pushed through marsh along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain at its juncture with the Tchefuncte River, reaching a record high 7.9 feet in Madisonville, where it damaged 40 percent of the historic waterfront town's homes.

But it still came as a surprise to Madisonville Mayor Peter Gitz to learn that the Army Corps of Engineers may recommend a voluntary buyout of properties south of Louisiana 22, which bisects the town, as part of the corps' comprehensive plan to protect south Louisiana from catastrophic hurricanes.

Gitz and others are learning what flood protection from a "Category 5" hurricane, the classification for the most intense storms, could mean for the New Orleans area. While the corps is still working on its Category 5 plan, a "progress report" obtained by The Times-Picayune offers a preliminary look at the agency's three-pronged approach to protecting the region: flood control, coastal restoration and "buyout" zones.

Yes, buyouts.

Part of Madisonville -- along with hundreds of acres in other wetland or low-lying areas outside of proposed levee systems -- appears so vulnerable to storm surge that a government buyout of residences and businesses is listed as one potential option.

The areas pictured also include the southernmost parts of Slidell, Mandeville and Lacombe on the north shore; Delacroix and Reggio in St. Bernard Parish; Ruddock in St. John the Baptist Parish; Lafitte and Barataria in Jefferson Parish; and a number of communities on both sides of the river in Plaquemines Parish. The report doesn't say how many buildings are in the areas proposed for buyouts.

Gitz isn't buying it. The 72-year-old mayor views Katrina as an extremely unusual event with little chance of repeating.

"I was 12 when the 1947 hurricane hit us, and it didn't cause such high water," he said. "Audrey, Betsy, Camille and all the others, we never had water over elevation 6."

The draft document, which details work the agency already should have completed, has not yet been released to the public. The corps missed a Dec. 31 deadline to make recommendations to Congress, angering the state's congressional delegation, as well as state officials and advocates for coastal restoration and flood protection.

The report includes a variety of options for levees and coastal restoration projects, all labeled as "examples" rather than concrete proposals. But the buyout proposal -- similar to a controversial plan the corps pitched last year in Mississippi -- represents new territory for the agency.

Hundreds of acres of mostly wetland areas or low ground outside of proposed levee systems are labeled for buyout based on two reasons:

-- Computer models indicate that 400-year or 1,000-year hurricanes would throw surge at vulnerable areas with enough force to knock down buildings or move them off their foundations.

-- The models show the surge would be so high that the buildings would be inundated.

The maps also recommend even larger areas, still outside proposed levees, to be targeted for raising of buildings to heights of as much as 14 feet. The corps report doesn't specify who should pay for the buyouts or building elevations.

Last year, the corps proposed a voluntary buyout, using federal money, for 17,000 residential properties across the Mississippi Coast. The proposal was quickly reduced to as few as 3,000 houses over five years after property owners and local elected officials raised objections.

The buyout and elevation strategies "provide the most definitive risk reduction by removing assets at risk," said Col. Al Lee, commander of the corps' New Orleans District office.

But corps project manager Al Naomi said the corps still must work with local stakeholders "to get a sense of what's implementable and what isn't."

Corps delays process

The corps was directed to deliver a comprehensive protection plan to Congress by Dec. 31. In a Dec. 20 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Army Assistant Secretary for Public Works John Paul Woodley Jr. said the corps could not make the deadline but would send a progress report in about two months.

With the clock ticking on Louisiana's eroding coast, the delay raised the ire of Louisiana's U.S. senators and state officials. Most of the leading researchers studying coastal erosion have said that Louisiana must take drastic action within the next 10 years to have any hope of saving key sections of coastline, vital for hurricane protection.

"It is extremely disappointing that the corps is again ignoring the intent of Congress by delaying their report," said U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. "Bureaucratic foot-dragging leaves in lingering jeopardy both our coast and the safety of the millions of Louisianians living there."

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., echoed that sentiment.

"The administration has had years to prepare this report," he said. "Unfortunately, missing another key deadline will reinforce the fear many, including me, have -- that they haven't adopted the right sense of urgency regarding coastal protection, and that they're too focused on cost versus best engineering."

The delays stem largely from a decision by the corps to design a new, complex process for selecting which projects should be part of the plan, after being ordered by Congress not to use its traditional method of weighing the financial benefits of projects against the cost.

Corps officials say the new selection process, which they call a "matrix," is necessary to assure that the ability of individual projects to reduce storm surge risk is supported by science and engineering, that their construction and maintenance are affordable, and that they meet the political and cultural demands of the state's residents.

For the past two years, state officials have repeatedly pointed out that many of the projects have been on the drawing board for years, and that remaining scientific questions can be answered as the individual projects are undergoing design and construction.

"We don't have time to wait for their schedule," said Sidney Coffee, who recently stepped down as director of the Governor's Office of Coastal Activities and chairwoman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Officials are frustrated

Several parish officials also are concerned about continuing to wait for a plan, and at the lack of input they have had in its direction.

Slidell Mayor Ben Morris is one of those who has yet to be contacted about proposals for buyouts or for a U-shaped levee around the city.

"It may make some sense, but I would like to see what they're talking about," Morris said of the buyout proposal. "If they want to buy out half the city, that's one thing. But if they're only interested in small areas, that's different."

Morris said he's much more worried about the time spent looking at such alternatives, instead of moving forward with projects to restore wetlands and barrier islands.

"They will already have built the Ben Morris Memorial Phone Booth by the time those are built," he said.

Morris said he is equally frustrated by the slow response to past requests from Slidell officials to help pay for a levee to protect the city's southern boundary and the lengthy study under way to determine how to protect his city from much larger hurricanes.

"I could have put a levee up there for a half-million dollars that would have done a great job during Katrina for at least some of the surge," he said. "Why reinvent the wheel when you can get a cheap fix? Then, if a permanent solution comes up 10 or 11 years from now, do that permanent solution."

St. Tammany Parish spokeswoman Suzanne Parsons Stymiest said Parish President Kevin Davis has met several times with corps officials to discuss the long-term alternatives, including gate proposals and levees in various locations. But the buyout alternative had not been discussed.

"Any plan that would come forward from the federal government, or from anyone, would have to be extremely respectful," she said. "These are people's homes we're talking about, and any decision would have to take their feelings into account."

Neither does Plaquemines Parish have time to wait for the report to be completed, said new parish coastal restoration director P.J. Hahn.

"We think we should be taking our offshore oil and gas revenue and bonding it out and leveraging that for more money to rebuild now," Hahn said. "The focus needs to stay on Plaquemines Parish because anything we do down here is going to have a huge impact on New Orleans and Jefferson Parish."

Storm speeds erosion

Corps officials say it will take several months for the agency to complete a required technical report, needed to support the final recommendations and expected to run some 4,000 pages.

Once complete, the report must undergo both a corps peer review process and an outside review by a panel of scientists and engineers with the National Academy of Sciences, which could take at least six weeks.

The corps also hasn't completed an environmental impact statement that must accompany the report and must undergo public review, including public hearings.

Woodley said he will forward the completed documents to Congress within 120 days of the completion of that process.

"Although I am painfully aware that each day of delay is disquieting to all of us that are dedicated to the Gulf Coast recovery efforts, we all realize that our decisions will ultimately be tested over time," he said in his letter to Pelosi.

Corps officials drafting the reports say the complicated process of determining how best to protect Louisiana's coastal communities probably should take at least five years, so missing a two-year deadline is not surprising.

Indeed, the dramatic damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the state's coastline -- about 217 square miles of wetlands turned into open water -- has caused those planning levee and restoration projects to rethink whether they will work. In some cases, levees that were believed to be buffered by wetlands that would avoid erosion for a generation are now facing open water.

"The loss attributed to these storms exceeds the wetland losses that had been projected to occur in the entire state over the next 20 years," the report said. "Viewed in relation to New Orleans alone, all of the wetlands that were expected to erode in the New Orleans area over the next 50 years were lost in a single day during the landfall of Hurricane Katrina."

Protecting Mississippi

Another unresolved issue is determining the effects of Louisiana projects on Mississippi's coastline, and vice versa. The corps' Mobile District office is leading a similar study of ways to increase protection to Mississippi's coast.

Several months after Katrina, scientists realized that New Orleans area levees refocused Katrina's storm surge onto the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which might have helped increase its height at Katrina's landfall there.

Right after Katrina, a variety of federal and state officials traveled to the Netherlands and saw the massive gates that are part of its storm protection system, then suggested using similar huge gates to block surge from entering Lake Pontchartrain through the Chef Menteur and Rigolets passes.

That plan would have allowed for lower levees on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, obviating the need for an alternative "high level" plan for higher levees along Orleans and Jefferson parishes, and allowing construction of a lower U-shaped levee around the southern edges of Slidell.

But extensive computer modeling of storm surges from potential hurricanes showed the high Netherlands-style gates could redirect storm surge to Mississippi, causing planners to reconsider.

"The longer they stay with it, the more the high-level plan keeps coming back to the forefront," said Norwyn Johnson, state Department of Natural Resources coastal project manager.

The result has been more study of a hybrid of the two plans, according to the report. In the new alternative, the corps would use weirs instead of floodgates at the Chef Menteur and Rigolets passes, and then build slightly higher levees on the lake's south shore and new levees on the lake's north shore.

The weirs would allow water to flow through during non-storm periods, or could be designed to act as gates, being in place only during storms. The part of the structure that would be solid would be lower than the Netherlands-style gates, however, to block surge from smaller hurricanes.

Surge from larger hurricanes would go over the top of the weirs and into the lake, reducing the amount of water bouncing off toward Mississippi.

Levees along the south shore lakefront and Slidell might have to be higher to take into account the surge entering the lake.

But it's still the process of running all the projects through the decision matrix developed by the corps that has frustrated state and local officials.

"How much time have we spent to develop a matrix? Two years, and what we have now from the federal government to present to Congress is not even the beginning of a real comprehensive approach to this thing," said Coffee, who now works as a consultant to the America's Wetland Foundation, which supports a public relations campaign supporting coastal restoration for the state.

"What are we going to have after another year?" she asked. "Do the math. It's too slow."