Levee System Built After Katrina Prevents Flooding In New Orleans

A $14.5 billion system of levees, flood gates, and pumps has largely worked as designed during Hurricane Ida, sparing New Orleans from the catastrophic flooding that devastated the area 16 years ago in the wake of Katrina, officials said, Nathan Layne reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Seabrook Floodgate Complex

Ida, a destructive Category 4 storm packing heavy rains, extreme winds, and coastal surges, overwhelmed some levees in communities south of New Orleans and outside the 350-mile (560-km) protective ring completed with federal funding in 2018.

But the core area inundated during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when levees failed and 80% of the city was underwater, appeared to have avoided widespread flooding, suggesting the upgraded network of levees, gates, and pumps worked.

The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East, the state agency that manages the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS), said that no levees had been breached and no problems reported with its water-pumping machines.

"For the most part, all of our levees performed extremely well, especially the federal levees," said Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, taking stock one day after Ida made landfall in Port Fourchon, some 60 miles (100 km) south of New Orleans.

"But at the end of the day, the storm surge, the rain, the wind, all had devastating impacts across southeast Louisiana." To be sure, officials were still assessing the toll of a storm that knocked out power across Louisiana, ripped roofs off homes and businesses, and killed at least one person.

Ida, which was grinding over southwestern Mississippi on Monday, has lost some punch but remains a powerful storm.

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