Feds: Outside experts to review seeping La. levee

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Outside experts will review work at a canal where one of the New Orleans area's worst levee breaks occurred during Hurricane Katrina, and where water is seeping through the mushy ground despite $22 million in repairs, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

''I have agreed with southeastern (Louisiana) levee authorities as well as the state to go ahead and do an independent peer review, to put to rest what the issues are with the seepage,'' said Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the corps task force responsible for restoring levees in the five-parish area.

Who will conduct the review has yet to be determined, she said.

Outside experts have told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees and could cause some to collapse if water in the canals gets within a foot of Katrina's 7-foot levels.

The repairs included driving interlocking sheets of metal 60 feet into the ground, 43 feet deeper than before the storm. However, there is evidence that canal water is seeping through the joints.

The corps has defended its work, but also has been digging a trench to find the precise source of wet spots inside the levees.

''Bringing in what we hope is a truly independent review to look at the leaks at the 17th Street Canal -- that is commendable,'' said Sandy Rosenthal, founder of Levees.org, a group that has lobbied for overhauling the Corps.

Aside from that, Rosenthal said in an interview, ''I'm not aware of anything that was presented that would give the citizens of this area any reason to feel safe.''

Aguilera spoke during a half-hour teleconference with General Douglas O'Dell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, and Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commander of the corps' Mississippi Valley division, as the June 1 start of hurricane season neared.

O'Dell and Walsh said the New Orleans area's hurricane protection is better than it has ever been, but that parish or neighborhood risk estimates are not available.

''This is a very complex system, so to be able to talk in specific terms of neighborhood protection versus parish protection versus the entire system, probably defies the amount of time we have left on this call,'' O'Dell said.

The corps' goal, set by Congress, is protection by 2011 from a 100-year storm -- one with a 1 percent chance of hitting in any given year.

Leaky New Orleans levee alarms experts

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses.

Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press that the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood afflicts other New Orleans levees, too, and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.

The Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011. Some outside experts said the leak could mean that billions more will be needed and that some of the work already completed may need to be redone.

"It is all based on a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking, and it means that when they wake up to this one -- really -- our cost is going to increase significantly," said Bob Bea, a civil engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Army Corps of Engineers disputed the experts' dire assessment. The agency said it is taking the risk of seepage into account and rebuilding the levees with an adequate margin of safety.

"It's always a potential, so it is a design component for every feature," said Walter Baumy, the chief corps engineer in New Orleans.

The 17th Street Canal floodwall collapsed on the day Katrina surged over New Orleans in August 2005, and the failure severely damaged Lakeview. It was one of the biggest of about 50 levee breaches that contributed to the deaths of about 1,300 people.

Fixing the 17th Street Canal has been one of the most expensive and laborious repair jobs since the storm and has served as something of a test case for scientists and engineers, who plan to apply the lessons learned there to the city's other levees.

Among other things, they repaired the wall by driving interlocking sheets of steel 60 feet into the ground, compared with about 17 feet before the storm. The sheet metal is supposed to prevent canal water from seeping under the levee through the wet, toothpaste-like soil that lies beneath the city, which was built on reclaimed swamp and filled-in marsh.

Over the past few months, however, the corps found evidence that canal water is seeping through the joints in the sheet metal and then rising to the surface on the other side of the levee, forming puddles and other wet spots.

Engineers said the boggy ground is a more serious problem than the corps realizes. Bea said there is a roughly 40 percent chance of the 17th Street Canal levee collapsing if water rises higher than 6 feet above sea level. During Katrina, the water reached 7 feet in the canal.

John Schmertmann, a retired University of Florida professor and a consultant on foundations, agreed with Bea that the corps "may still be embedding some of these not-properly-considered factors, so the new walls may not do what the corps expects."

Reducing such seepage might require the driving of sheet metal far deeper into the ground than is done now, or some other solution, said Bea, who was part of a team of experts sent by the National Science Foundation to do an independent study of the levee failures during Katrina.

Donald Jolissaint, chief of the corps' technical support branch in New Orleans, denied the problem at the 17th Street Canal is serious.

"I personally do not at all believe that this little wet spot is anything that is going to cause a breach or a failure of any kind," he said. A newly installed floodgate could be used to cut off the flow of water into the canal and reduce pressure on the levee, he said.

Nevertheless, the corps is concerned enough that for weeks, workers have been analyzing the wet spots and digging a 160-foot-long, 10-foot-deep trench to zero in on the source. "We're doing everything we can to chase this down," Jolissaint said.

The corps is also spending about $100 million by taking more than 2,000 soil borings to find out what is under the ground and determine the best design.

Timothy Kusky, a geologist with Saint Louis University and an expert on the Mississippi River, said engineering a safe levee system in New Orleans will be very difficult because of the soil.

"You've got old riverbeds and floodplain deposits all interlayered and distributed laterally in a very complex way, and then you build a levee across them," Kusky said.

As a result, a levee sinks at different rates, and the sinking creates "little cracks in them that promote seepage, and also the old river channels and floodplain deposits have different potentials for underseepage," he said.

He said the corps understands a lot of the problems, but it takes a huge amount of data to map every weakness, and the agency does not have the manpower to see that every contractor is doing the job right.

Seepage was reported at the 17th Street Canal before Katrina. The corps denies that caused the collapse. Instead, the corps contends the floodwall flexed and finally cracked under the force of water piled against it by the storm.

EJ, St. Charles levees' strength in question

Study shatters faith in levee strength

Substantial work planned in East Jeff

Despite withstanding Hurricane Katrina and being poised to become the area's first levee to reach the vaunted 100-year storm elevation, the East Jefferson lakefront levee might not be adequate and may need to be totally rebuilt or substantially enlarged.

Stunning new data spit out by a complex geotechnical computer model has concluded that lake levees in East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish could be at risk for catastrophic failure.

Though Army Corps of Engineers officials said some experts doubt the accuracy of the new analysis, the agency intends to identify and implement solutions -- which could range from entirely rebuilding the levees to constructing a huge rock jetty in front of them.

"Our new method of analysis has given us (data) that we don't intend to ignore," said Lt. Col. Murray Starkel, deputy commander of the corps' New Orleans District.

Because the corps is under the gun to provide an improved hurricane protection system by 2011, officials said they can't wait for the results of additional studies that might ultimately debunk this new finding of the "Spencer's method" analysis.

"There will come a point at which we go forward with (contracts), even if they produce an overly conservative design," said geotechnical engineer John Grieshaber, technical support chief for the corps' Hurricane Protection Office.

"We will award contracts to meet that 2011 date, and if we find out later that we can do with a less conservative design, we can modify a contract in the field," he said.

Design standards updated

The computer-generated data, which blindsided even those engineers overseeing planned improvements to the region's hurricane protection system, are the result of applying more conservative design standards adopted since Katrina.

Key to that corps effort to ratchet up reliability, complex computer software was specially adapted over the past year that enabled the Spencer's analysis to identify any type of failure that could possibly occur in tricky south Louisiana soils.

As recently as January, engineers overseeing planned improvements to the East Jefferson lakefront predicted that it would be the first to attain the new elevations needed to help provide a stepped-up 100-year level of storm surge protection by 2011.

But the very next month, the Spencer's software began unspooling the news that it had identified a failure potential not detected by previous computer analyses in the Lake Pontchartrain levees of East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish.

"No, we absolutely did not expect this result," Rich Varuso, geotechnical chief for the district's engineering division, said of the geometry-based calculations that resulted.

Improving stability

In response to the Spencer findings, a team of consulting engineers already are analyzing methods of providing additional stability in the two areas that have been red-flagged.

In both cases, the deficiency stems from the size of geosynthetic materials -- heavy-duty fabrics, often made of polyester or polypropylene -- that were buried beneath the levees and berms to help stop levees from moving and failing.

Because the materials were used primarily in East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish, corps officials said the dilemma appears limited to the two parishes.

Spencer's analysis concluded that the geosynthetic material currently in place is about 20 feet too short to prevent the kind of "rotational failure" that the stuff is designed to prevent.

The previous analysis, called Method of Planes, or MOP, did not identify such a failure potential, Varuso said.

Varuso and Starkel say no earthen hurricane protection levee has ever suffered a rotational failure, which generally occurs when levee movement creates a crack near the crown and total collapse follows.

Experts disagree

Varuso said geotechnical engineers who have reviewed Spencer's geometry-based calculations at the lakefront disagree on whether they are valid findings or a fluke created by reconfigured software.

"Some experienced engineers in this field say there's no way that this (kind of failure) can happen under these circumstances, that physics won't allow it .¤.¤. and other experienced engineers feel that it could happen," he said.

Varuso said the new findings already have been passed along to other corps districts and some academicians for their opinions, and additional in-depth analyses and testing are being planned. Those findings will then be peer-reviewed by experts outside the agency.

But for now, Varuso and others said the corps can't wait for those results to endorse or debunk the findings.

"We're going to consider that it's legitimate, valid, until our own studies show otherwise unless they show otherwise," Varuso said.

Corps decision-makers said they will take no chances: If the calculations turn out to have been wrong, Starkel said, the corps's path of prudence will result in an overdesigned protection system for the two parishes.

"Is this really an issue we need to be concerned with, or is it an anomaly?" asked Starkel. "We're going to err on the side of caution and proceed with our evaluation of designs to address it. .¤.¤. We're being uber-conservative."

Although levees and floodwalls throughout the region are being reassessed using Spencer's method, it is the geosynthetic fabrics located mainly in East Jefferson and St. Charles that threw up the red flag.

"I don't think it's going to be a major factor anywhere else, but we'll have to see when the (complete analysis) is finished," Starkel said.

Each of the options being evaluated would alter the face of the lakefront in varying degrees, just as each will have varying effects on the environment and the neighborhoods that nestle up to the levees.

"We well understand the impact that expanding the footprint of the levees will have on humans and the environment," Starkel said. "Our goal has always been to design more robust levees in the same footprint if at all possible."

Starkel said all the alternatives will be publicly aired in a variety of venues once the geotechnical team finishes its analysis, possibly in June.

The options also will be included in Independent Environmental Reports, due out later this year, that will identify the corps' preferred method of addressing the stability issue.

Options to fortify the levees in East Jefferson and St. Charles include degrading the existing levees to bury and anchor wider lengths of the heavy-duty geosynthetic fabric, then rebuilding the levees. During hurricane season, no more than 300 feet of levee would be degraded at any one time.

Another option is ignoring the use of geosynthetic fabric and instead enlarging the levees and berm.

In East Jefferson only, additional options include building a large rock breakwater on the wave berm or even replacing the earthen levees with a floodwall.

Length of construction is particularly dicey against the backdrop of providing a higher level of protection by 2011.

"I would suggest to you that is a sacred date, and there will be protection by then," Grieshaber said.

Starkel said it's too soon to estimate additional costs, but said the corps hopes to mine any extra money needed from the contingency and escalation dollars built into the 100-year budget.

Ironically, the use of geosynthetic fabric was a concept pioneered in the New Orleans district, Varuso said, as a way of strengthening levees in highly developed, urban areas where right of way is at a premium.

"If we follow that (Spencer's) analysis, we're talking about drastic changes in EJ," Grieshaber concluded. "Maybe we'll end up getting information that allows us to tweak things so that the solution won't be as drastic as those (now) being considered.

"But at the end of the day, there will have to be some type of change out there, and we're not just going to add more (dirt) to the top of the levee," he said. "That won't do it."

What would you do with 3 Trillion dollars?

This has everything to do with New Orleans and Kanye West was correct, W doesn't give a fuck about black people.

FEMA to close Renaissance Village trailer site May 31

BAKER -- Margaret Chopin is quick to share her photograph of an East Baton Rouge Parish garden home, highlighting its well-kept lawn, ample garage and generous space for her husband, son and granddaughter.


But the New Orleans native and former Gentilly resident won't call it home any time soon.

Because a possible lease on the property fell through, Chopin shows it off only to illustrate the frustration and longing that come with living in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer in Renaissance Village, which opened in October 2005 in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

For Chopin and her neighbors, most of them from the New Orleans area and most having lived in Renaissance Village since it opened, the angst magnifies daily with the approach of FEMA's May 31 deadline to close all its remaining group trailer sites.

At one time the largest concentration of the travel trailers along the Gulf Coast, Renaissance's fences now envelop fewer than 190 trailers. This is down from the 580 that once filled the expansive gravel lot, which is just a short drive from the Louisiana Capitol. Residents have no monthly rent but do pay for propane.

Those who are left essentially have two choices: Find permanent housing or move to a hotel for 30 days on the federal government's dime while continuing their hunt.

Most would qualify for subsidized rent under a program financed by FEMA and run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Residents would have to contribute $50 rent the first month, with their share increasing by $50 each month thereafter. The subsidy would end when the beneficiary covers the full rent amount or in March 2009, whichever comes first.

"I think some people think FEMA is going to come down out of the sky and give a lump sum to the people still here," said resident Bonnie Vernon, originally from Metairie, as she folded clothing in the communal laundry facility before hauling it back to her trailer in a red wagon with only three wheels. "I don't see how anybody who's lived through the last two years could believe that."

Manuel Broussard, spokesman for FEMA's Gulf Coast Recovery Office, described the situation as an opportunity for flood victims to couple self-reliance with the aid of FEMA case workers and the financial boost from the HUD-FEMA Disaster Housing Assistance Program to resume their lives.

'There's no way'

Statewide, group sites account for about 900 of the 20,146 FEMA trailers that were occupied as of April 4. More than 80 percent of those still in group sites were renters before the storms.

All residents are assigned a FEMA case worker to provide rental listings and put them in touch with potential landlords, but residents must secure the leases.

Broussard expressed concerns about meeting the closure deadline for parks in places such as Plaquemines Parish and southwest Louisiana, where he said trailer occupants outnumber viable rental units. But, he said, "we believe we're going to be in pretty good shape" getting the last 185-plus households out of Renaissance.

A more pessimistic view pervades among Renaissance residents, employees and Catholic Charities case managers who work in the park alongside FEMA's case workers. Citing a web of aggravating factors, they said the transition from a trailer is easier to talk about than to accomplish.

Wilbert Ross, displaced from the Lower 9th Ward, said "there's no way" FEMA will meet its deadline at Renaissance. Ross already has left the park once, but could not keep up with his rent.

Sam Sammartino, disaster response director for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, noted that FEMA has failed to meet previous deadlines for other Baton Rouge-area parks -- Mount Olive, Granberry, Sugar Hill -- typically by several months. He said Catholic Charities even attempts to slow down some residents who might be signing a lease they won't be able to afford once the subsidy runs out.

"It's easy to sit there and say, 'These people ought to get a job, get it together and move out,'" said Sammartino, who supervises more than a dozen recovery case workers for more than 900 client households in 12 parishes. "We would want everyone to consider that each case is complex, each case different."

The peak population for Renaissance was estimated in excess of 1,600 -- with more than 3,000 people residing there at some point since its opening. Sammartino said the current number of residents likely is at least double the 188 trailers. Most of the remaining households have children or senior citizens, or both.

Broussard said FEMA does not keep statistics on whether evacuees return to their original home parishes or neighborhoods. He said a majority have settled around Baton Rouge. New Orleanians who want to return mostly can do so, he said, provided they do not insist on returning to their previous neighborhood.

High local rents

The chief complaint about housing for those still looking is the rising rents of post-storm East Baton Rouge Parish, which was growing before the 2005 hurricanes and has absorbed a net gain of at least 25,000 people since.

Chopin, who works three part-time jobs inside the park, said her search for a home in East Baton Rouge Parish had been mostly discouraging. "If you can afford it, you don't want to live there," she said.

The disaster housing assistance will pay as much as 125 percent of the average fair market value for a residence in a given parish. Carol Spruell, spokeswoman for Catholic Charities, estimated that in East Baton Rouge, this is $800 to $900 for a two-bedroom apartment, more for a house. Both figures are considerably higher in Orleans Parish, she said.

Spruell said her organization estimates it would take at least a $17-an-hour, full-time job to make that rent in Baton Rouge with two dependents.

Transportation troubles

Residents say the lack of transportation also hampers their housing search.

Chopin said she and her husband have one car, but he uses it to get to his job on the support staff at a local school. That makes it difficult, she said, to balance her typical 11- to 12-hour work days with trips to find housing. "A case worker might take you or might not," she said.

A bus route, paid for by FEMA, runs about every hour from the park to the local Wal-Mart, Baker Library and central public bus terminal in Baton Rouge. But the last bus typically returns to the park at 9 to 10 p.m., residents said, limiting late-shift employment options.

For Renaissance residents who can find a place, additional barriers come in the form of utility and lease deposits, transporting trailer belongings to an apartment and buying appliances that none of them has now.

FEMA pays some deposits, and Catholic Charities fills some additional needs not covered by FEMA. But help with furniture and appliances falls entirely on private organizations.

One of the most frustrating gaps in service, Sammartino said, is transportation for moving. FEMA has a relocation assistance program, but the Renaissance residents who hail from the New Orleans area but settle around Baton Rouge do not qualify because they are not returning close enough to home.

"I've asked FEMA just to send trucks up here," he said. "I've gotten no response."

Mood of 'despair'

In some respects, FEMA officials said, Renaissance Village represents success stories. Empty trailer spots, marked by water pipes and other infrastructure rising from the gravel, dwarf the number of temporary residences still set up.

In the rear of the park are a playground and classroom buildings housing early childhood learning centers. The project was financed by actress-comic Rosie O'Donnell's foundation. Arcenia Crayton, a resident of the park from its opening until October 2007, staffs another building that serves as a community center in the morning before shifting to an after-school program.

But Chopin said the overriding mood still is "depression, ... despair." Sammartino said he daily fights "fear of the unknown" and "paralysis even among people who know what they need to do." And "FEMA" remains a four-letter word in most conversations.

Sammartino and others, meanwhile, said they worry FEMA will begin urging residents into hotels come June.

"Their job is not necessarily to get people into the right situation," said Crayton, who before the storm lived in Marrero with her husband and three sons. "Their job," she said, "is to get people out of that trailer."

Corps' levee projects on the hot seat

Residents of Jefferson and St. Charles parishes questioned Army Corps of Engineers officials Thursday about a $1 billion plan to raise hurricane protection levees in both parishes.

At the public hearing at the East Bank Regional Library in Metairie, residents questioned the corps' plans, which involve building a new floodwall on the Jefferson-St. Charles Parish line, and raising the levees along the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline to heights ranging from 15 feet to 17.5 feet and armoring the front of the levee with a low floodwall.

The purpose of the hearing was to get public input on the environmental effects of the proposed projects, though residents in attendance were primarily concerned about the levees' effectiveness.

Ryan Crais of Kenner asked why the corps chose the floodwall along the parish line canal, also known as the West Return Canal.

"I thought the waves against that wall were going to shake my house apart," he said, referring to the storm surge during Hurricane Katrina. "Let the waves break on the other side, not right against the wall."

He wanted the corps to instead build an earthen levee along the canal, an alternative corps officials said was considered.

But Stuart Waits, the corps project manager for that job, said the soil in the marshy area is not stable enough to hold a levee. Instead, a new floodwall will be built about 35 feet west of the existing floodwall, which was constructed in a less stable I configuration. The new wall will be built in the shape of an upside down T for extra stability, he said.

On the 10-mile stretch of lakefront levee between the canal and the Orleans Parish line, corps officials say a 6-foot-high breakwater at the shoreline is needed because when the original lakefront levees were built in the 1960s, the shoreline was about 200 feet farther away. The breakwater would help keep the shoreline from encroaching on the levee.

Fran Campbell, executive director of the East Jefferson Levee District, said she had lobbied the corps to move the breakwater farther north to reclaim some of that land lost to the lake, but was turned down.

A major part of the East Jefferson project will be to build 17-foot-high floodwalls around the outflows of the parish's four major lakefront pump stations to prevent them from becoming the Achilles' heels of the protection system.

Under the design being considered, the pumps would continue to operate during a storm, pumping rainwater into the lake through openings in the walls or over the walls. But should the power fail, the discharge pipes would be mechanically sealed.

Metairie resident Don Neubeck complained that the shutoff systems would have to be operated manually and that automatic shutoffs should be used to prevent the surge from moving backward through the pumps after a power failure.

"That's the weak link in the system," he said.

Senior Project Manager Carl Anderson said that point would be considered before the design was completed.

In St. Charles Parish, the levees would be raised to between 13 feet and 15 feet. The corps has decided its best bet is to widen the base of the levee by about 300 feet to handle the extra height. The corps had considered placing an extra layer of geotextile fabric on the levee, which would have allowed it to build up the elevation on its existing base.

The public review period for the St. Charles levee, known as IER1, will run from April 1 through May 1. The west return canal floodwall comment period will run from April 8 to May 8. That project is called IER2. The comment period for the Lake Pontchartrain levee plan, known as IER3, will run from April 21 through May 21.

A final decision date for the three projects are tentatively set for May 19, 22 and 28, respectively.

FEMA trailers deadline looming

Only three weeks remain for people living in FEMA trailers to get out for good under Jefferson Parish's continuing crackdown on the emergency housing units.

March 1 is the no-exceptions date when residents in about 1,500 remaining trailers will no longer be able to ask inspectors for more time. All cases will instead switch from inspectors to parish attorneys and be decided by parish hearing officers or in the courts.

Zoning laws against using the trailers as permanent housing in residential areas will return to full force, said D.J. Mumphrey, an executive assistant to Parish President Aaron Broussard who supervises the crackdown. He said residents' arguments that they still need the units as they rebuild from the 2005 hurricanes will be closely scrutinized.

It's going to be under a microscope," Mumphrey said, suggesting the parish will turn to judges in the 24th Judicial District Court or other venues to force residents out of their trailers. "It's our intent to go to the courts with this."

Mumphrey estimated that about 1,500 trailers remain in front of houses in the unincorporated parts of Jefferson that fall under the trailer removal campaign. Including cities and one remaining trailer group site operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a total of 2,168 units still dotted the parish at the end of January.

The big white boxes that symbolized the early phases of Hurricane Katrina recovery peaked in Jefferson Parish in 2006, when FEMA counted more than 19,000 of them in the parish.

Arguing for the need to restore normalcy in neighborhoods, the parish last year launched its effort to remove them, reestablishing the codes that prohibit them and sending teams of inspectors to post violation notices on trailer doors.

Inspectors granted extensions to residents who demonstrated their houses remained unlivable with storm damage, while other cases went to hearing officers who listened to residents' cases and allowed extensions or imposed fines.

The remaining cases involve disagreements between residents and the parish that inspectors and code officials cannot resolve, so parish attorneys will now take over the effort, said Louis Savoye, code enforcement director.

"There's a vast majority that probably, in our eyes, aren't justified," Savoye said. "In the owners' eyes, they are."

We feel like these decisions are too critical for us bureaucrats to make," he said.
Because FEMA must honor local laws, Savoye said the parish might refer some cases to the federal agency, giving federal officials notice that trailers are in violation of codes and must be removed.

"We have been as cooperative and as helpful as we can to the vast majority of the citizens," Savoye said. "You have to be compassionate, but if you sit around, people will take advantage of you. You have to be compassionate, but aggressive."

Trailer dwellers who still need housing help as they recover from Katrina can seek rental assistance through FEMA, parish officials said.

Gina Cortez, a spokeswoman for the agency, said case workers can help people locate apartments and qualify for rental aid in a program that has been operated jointly by FEMA and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development since December.

That program is also slated to phase out. Beginning in March, people receiving disaster rental help will have to pay $50 toward the cost of their rent, a number that will rise by $50 each month until residents are covering their entire housing bills or the assistance program ends entirely in March 2009.

The program, however, also refers people to social services and job training, Cortez said. "What we want is to work with them step by step to help them get back on their feet," she said.
Cortez said FEMA is cooperating with Jefferson to move residents from trailers and into the rental assistance program.

Partly under pressure from the parish, the agency has closed all but one of the 13 trailer enclaves that it once operated in Jefferson for storm victims who did not have another place to put a trailer. The remaining site, near Louis Armstrong International Airport, is scheduled to close in April.

Savoye said a handful of trailers remain installed outside businesses, but they occupy a low priority in the parish's trailer removal push because officials have not received any complaints about trailers in commercial areas.

The Jefferson trailer drawdown is a piece of a broader, post-Katrina code enforcement campaign in Jefferson that has also targeted rental storage units, blighted buildings, overgrown lots and abandoned swimming pools.

New Orleans residents accuse corps of racism

Angry residents of eastern New Orleans, the lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish resumed their criticism of the speed at which the Army Corps of Engineers has moved to protect their areas from hurricanes during a public hearing Thursday night.

"You people are involved in blatant racism regarding the black community all over this city," said Vanessa Gueringer, a member of the ACORN activist group representing the Lower 9th Ward.

The complaints focused on concerns raised last summer when the corps published maps showing that early repairs to the levee system in the area, especially the construction of gates on three canals in western New Orleans, dramatically reduced the risk of flooding in predominantly white neighborhoods, while the risk of flooding of largely African-American neighborhoods remained nearly the same as before Katrina.

Corps officials attempted to explain that the solutions for flooding on the city's eastern edge are taking longer because of the difficulties involved in determining how best to rebuild that part of the protection system.

Gib Owen, a civilian corps employee in charge of the environmental studies required for the projects, said the agency short-circuited the normal construction process by conducting environmental studies at the same time that preliminary studies were done on individual projects. But some projects, such as protection of the Industrial Canal, have taken longer to design because of the complicated engineering issues involved in building navigable gates, compared with earthen levees, he said.

Still, the corps has moved to speed up that process as well, requiring the company that will be chosen to design and build the Industrial Canal protection project to take interim steps to block surge by the beginning of the 2009 hurricane season.

Maj. Jeremy Chapman, who oversees the Industrial Canal project, said that contract, expected to cost at least $500 million, will be awarded in March.

August Martin, a branch chief with the corps' local Hurricane Protection Office, attempted to head off the charges of racism earlier in the meeting by answering many of the same questions that were raised at a similar meeting in eastern New Orleans two months ago.

"The entire area west of the (Industrial Canal) does not have a complete 100-year level of protection," Martin said, referring to areas with larger white population. "There is still major work to be done to protect that basin."

But residents attending the meeting at the Church at New Orleans on Chef Menteur Highway were not convinced, especially when corps officials said the decision to protect Lakeview soon after Katrina was directed by congressional authorizations.

"When the corps goes to Congress with maps and data, politicians are not engineers," Gueringer said. "They're depending on you to explain what they should do.

"When you went up there, why didn't you say these are the areas in critical need of attention?" she asked. "If you're a black person living in these areas, what happened? Who spoke for us before Congress?"

Dan Arceneaux, a member of the St. Bernard Coastal Zone Management Advisory Commission, also was critical of the corps' plan to close the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet near Hopedale.

He said that in deciding to close the Gulf outlet with a rock dike that would stick out of the water by only 5 feet at high tide, the corps ignored congressional orders to listen to St. Bernard officials, who have argued that the dike should be higher to help block surge.

Chapman said the dike was designed that way because its purpose is to reduce the erosion damage being caused by the open MR-GO, and not to serve as a flood-protection project.

Thursday's meeting is one of 41 held throughout the area since March to discuss the various hurricane protection construction projects.

The agency is accepting questions or comments on IER 11, the environmental report on the Industrial Canal project, through Feb. 29 at its Web site, www.nolaenvironmental.gov .