Associated Press
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the Corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where two of the plaintiffs lived.
Duval awarded the plaintiffs U.S. $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses, and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.
Speaking in May, months before the ruling, Bob Bea, a civil engineer and levee expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told National Geographic News that the federal government could be on the hook for as much as two trillion dollars.
"Monumental Negligence"
The ruling is also emotionally resonant for southern Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that the flooding in the aftermath of the hurricane, which struck the region on August 29, 2005, was a human-made disaster caused by the Army Corps' failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city. (See Hurricane Katrina pictures.)
"Total devastation could possibly have been avoided if something had been done," said Tanya Smith, one of the plaintiffs. "A lot of this stuff was preventable and they turned a deaf ear to it."
The 36-year-old registered nurse anesthetist lived in Chalmette close to the channel when Katrina hit. She was awarded $317,000 in property damages, the most of any of the plaintiffs.
Duval referred to the corps' approach to maintaining the channel as "monumental negligence."
Joe Bruno, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, said the ruling underscored the Army Corps' long history of not properly protecting the New Orleans region.
"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," Bruno said.
"Ratty Piles of Dirt"
The corps referred calls seeking comment to the Justice Department. Spokesperson Charles Miller said the government would review the judge's ruling before making any decision on how to proceed.
During trial testimony, government lawyers and experts argued the levee system was overwhelmed by the massive storm, and levee breaches couldn't solely be blamed on the shipping channel dug in the 1960s as a shortcut between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.
UC Berkeley's Bea testified during the trial. He said in May that the outcome would have "major implications for flood protection in the rest of the U.S."
For instance, Bea examined levees in parts of Missouri and Iowa, which failed in July 2008 and caused major flooding. Bea described most of the flood-protection levees he saw in the Midwest as "ratty piles of dirt"—similar to those he'd seen in St. Bernard Parish.
The corps had also unsuccessfully argued that it's immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood-control system.
In his 156-page ruling, Duval said he was "utterly convinced" that the corps' failure to shore up the channel "doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width" and that "created a more forceful frontal wave attack on the levee" that protected St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward.
"The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so," Duval said. "Clearly the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here."
Unprecedented Ruling
The corps has been sued before over levee failures and flooding, but it had always walked away untouched. That included after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 over alleged flooding by the outlet. Ahead of Duval's ruling, experts had said it would likely have consequences for the way the Army Corps does business nationwide.
Pierce O'Donnell, another lead plaintiffs lawyer, said the ruling was the "first time ever the Army Corps has been held liable for damages for a major catastrophe that it caused."
The plaintiffs lawyers would like Congress to set up a compensation fund to speed up payments to the thousands of other claimants, whose claims must still be heard in court.
The government is expected to appeal, and UC Berkeley's Bea also predicted in May that the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Willie Drye contributed to this report
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