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GAO-07-908R 1 (2007-05-23)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptavmk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Sai Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 May 23, 2007 The Honorable Mary L. Landrieu Chairman Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs United States Senate Subject: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Procurement of Pumping Systems for the New Orleans Drainage Canals Dear Madam Chairman: To avoid flooding in New Orleans after a rain storm, the city's Sewerage and Water Board pumps rainwater from the city into three drainage canals at 17h Street, London Avenue, and Orleans Avenue, which then flows unrestricted into Lake Pontchartrain. The maximum amount of water that the Sewerage and Water Board can pump into these drainage canals is 10,500 cubic feet per second (cfs) at the 17th Street Canal, 7,980 cfs at the London Avenue Canal, and 2,690 cfs at the Orleans Avenue Canal. While critical to prevent flooding from rainfall, these canals are vulnerable to storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain during a hurricane, and consequently are lined with floodwalls along both sides to protect storm surge from overtopping the canals and flooding the city. However, during Hurricane Katrina, several breaches occurred in the canal floodwalls allowing significant amounts of water to enter New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain. In its efforts to restore pre-Katrina levels of hurricane protection to New Orleans by the June i't start of the 2006 hurricane season, in late 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) considered strengthening the drainage canal floodwalls but decided to postpone this effort due to cost and time constraints. Instead, the Corps decided to install three interim closure structures (gates) at the points where the canals meet the lake. These gates would be closed during major storm events to prevent storm surge from entering the canals and potentially breaching the canal floodwalls and flooding the city. With the gates closed, however, rainwater cannot flow from the drainage canals into Lake Pontchartrain and large capacity pumping systems are needed to pump water out of the canals and into the lake. Due to space constraints along the canals and the limited amount of time it had before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, the Corps GAO-07-908R Corps' Efforts to Provide Pumping Capacity

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