A US federal judge ruled on 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.
US 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 US$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.
The ruling is also emotionally resonant for south Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that the flooding in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck the region on Aug. 29, 2005, was a manmade disaster caused by the Army Corps’ failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.
“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 US$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.
He said he expected the government to appeal.
The corps referred calls seeking comment to the Justice Department. Spokesman 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 short-cut between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.
The corps had also unsuccessfully argued that it is 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.”
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.”
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS