Corps storm plan rapped

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 14, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The Army Corps of Engineers’ latest plan for Category 5 hurricane protection in Louisiana is still very late and very short of recommendations, priorities and overall cost estimates, according to a National Research Council of the National Academies report released Tuesday.

The corps’ plan and the National Research Council’s review are the result of congressional action after hurricanes Katrina and Rita slammed into Louisiana in 2005. Congress directed the corps to develop a full range of methods and systems that would provide Category 5 hurricane protection to Louisiana’s coast.

A preliminary report was due to Congress by June 2006 and a final report in December 2007. The final report, however, is still pending.

It’s now expected the corps will release a final report this December or sometime in early spring or summer next year, said Robert Dalrymple, chairman of the National Research Council committee and the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor of civil engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

The National Research Council report praises the corps’ development of new ways to evaluate complicated decisions and procedures.

The report, however, is critical of the corps’ lack of priorities and clear recommendations.

“There should be some kind of recommendations made,” Dalrymple said. “They ended up with a shopping list of recommendations.”

In addition, the corps makes some assumptions that need better documentation, the report says.

For example, the committee questioned the corps’ assumption that coastal areas — currently losing about 24 square miles a year — can be stabilized at their current configurations.

The corps also didn’t present information to back an assumption that there is enough sediment carried by the Mississippi River to halt erosion, Dalrymple said.

“All of their plans require a lot of restoration to be done,” he said. “It’s not clear where that sediment would come from.”

Garret Graves, director of the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, agreed.

“The chances of our coast remaining exactly as it is today is virtually an impossibility,” Graves said. “There’s no question we have a dynamic coast.”