The Slow Drowning of New Orleans

Unfortunately, the more that levees constricted the Mississippi, the higher its waters rose, and the resulting crevasses were more destructive than ever. As author John McPhee recounted, Corps officials proclaimed the river under control "before the great floods of 1884, 1890, 1891, 1897, 1898 and 1903, and . . . again before 1912, 1913, 1922 and 1927."

The last flood was the worst, killing more than 1,000 people, leaving 1 million homeless. New Orleans was spared, but only after the city's banking elite persuaded the Corps to dynamite a levee upstream, which virtually destroyed the poorer parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines. New Orleans was never the same after the 1927 catastrophe; it remained one of the nation's most important ports, but it began to lose its status as the financial capital of the South, as the region's center of gravity shifted to Atlanta.

The Corps had failed in its mission, but its power over the river only expanded. The agency's commander unveiled a new plan for the Mississippi, featuring reservoirs and spillways as well as higher levees, and when members of Congress asked if he expected them to rubber-stamp his plan just because the Corps wrote it, he replied, "Yes." Congress enacted the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project, one of the most ambitious and expensive federal initiatives ever. The federal government would pay the entire cost, a departure from usual requirements for local contributions. The Mississippi's levees would be designed against an 800-year flood.

But protection had its price. The armored and constricted Mississippi no longer eroded its banks and rambled across its floodplain, so it no longer carried as much silt to its delta, and no longer built coastal marshes that helped blunt the impact of hurricanes. As the Corps choked off the river's natural land-building process, marshes disintegrated into open water at a rate of 25 square miles per year. And low-lying New Orleans began to sink even lower, as the tons of silt that had shored up the city's foundation no longer served as natural fill.

The city was now safer from the river. But it was more exposed than ever to the sea.

* * * In the 1950s , after a series of storms battered the Atlantic coast, Congress directed the Corps to get serious about hurricanes, and the agency began devising the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project for New Orleans. This was also the height of the postwar era of big infrastructure spending, and Congress put the Corps to work digging the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a shortcut to the Port of New Orleans.

Water projects were becoming a form of currency in Congress, a way to steer money to constituents and contributors, and the Corps was becoming a quasi-congressional agency, building the projects desired by its legislative patrons. In different ways, these two projects would help set the stage for Katrina.

Initially, the Corps was cool to the Gulf outlet; as late as 1951, according to an official Corps history, "the costs were shown to be high and the benefits . . . speculative." And critics in nearby St. Bernard Parish denounced it as a hurricane highway, a storm-surge shotgun pointed at the city's gut. But the outlet had strong support from Louisiana politicians and powerful shipping interests. Under heavy pressure, the Corps concluded that the project was justified as an economic engine, and Congress approved it in 1956.

At first, there was no such push for the hurricane project. The Corps determined that a "Standard Project Hurricane," the worst storm it deemed likely to strike over a 200-year period, would inundate "a major part of metropolitan New Orleans." But there was not much demand for expensive protection that would come in handy only once every 200 years, so the Lake Pontchartrain project remained on the drawing board until Sept. 9, 1965.

That was the day Hurricane Betsy ravaged New Orleans, trapping as many as 30,000 residents in their homes. Families hacked through attic timbers to take refuge on their roofs, and at least 70 people died. Damage exceeded $1 billion for the first time in the United States, earning the storm the nickname "Billion-Dollar Betsy."

Now it was clear something had to be done, and Louisiana's delegation -- led by Democratic insiders such as Senate Majority Whip Russell B. Long, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and Senate Appropriations Chairman Allen Ellender -- had more than enough clout to make sure the Corps did it.

Long, son of the legendary firebrand Huey P. Long, immediately called President Lyndon B. Johnson and invited him to Louisiana. When Johnson offered to send his best man, Long shot back: "We are not the least bit interested in your best man." Johnson flew down right away. Six weeks later, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1965, authorizing the first federal hurricane protection for the New Orleans area.