Before and after photos of 6932 Bellaire Drive at ground zero of the 17th Street Canal breach site in the Lakeview region of New Orleans. Photo courtesy of Levees.org

At the 7th Anniversary of the worst civil engineering disaster in U.S. history, Levees.org will host a press conference in the Lakeview region of New Orleans. The group will discuss how the Corps of Engineers initially blamed New Orleans officials for Katrina flooding even though new data has been uncovered that shows the Corps took a $100 million shortcut in building its flood protection.

When: 10 a.m. Wed Aug 22, 2012
Where: Lakeview Harbor Restaurant, 911 Harrison Avenue, New Orleans.
Harry Shearer (producer The Big Uneasy, voice of the Simpsons) will participate in the press conference via skype.
There is plenty of free parking.

After Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers told national media that New Orleans officials played a contributing role in the failure of flood walls along the city’s outfall drainage canals and in the resulting flooding.

For several years, top Corps brass delivered this consistent message regarding the failure of the 17th Street and London Avenue Canals. They claimed that New Orleans agencies forced the Corps to build an inferior system.

Now, in a response to a records request submitted by Levees.org, to be released on August 22, the Corps admits that it cannot produce any data to support the claim.

Furthermore, Levees.org has uncovered a stunning analysis showing that the Corps of Engineers improperly conducted a pre-Katrina study and misinterpreted the results. Decisions made as a result of the Corps’ botched study led directly to the failure of two outfall drainage canals in 2005, and flooded the city’s main basin, the area with the highest concentration of people, property and infrastructure.

Levees.org has created a short video to illustrate this newly uncovered information and will show it at the press conference.