It seems the IPET made a huge error in their predictions of flooding in New Orleans’ Lakeview and Old Metairie neighborhoods. On June 20, 2007, the IPET team released flood maps saying the flooding in those areas was – due to the new floodgates and pumps – reduced by 5 feet. It turns out that flooding is reduced by only 6 inches.

Ed Link (head of IPET) said a human error (using a minus sign instead of a plus sign) caused the huge error.

For 5 months people have been using this information to make decisions. The error was uncovered by a third party who found the error deep in the appendices.

IPET knew about it and said nothing…..

You can find out more by clicking this link.

Sandy Rosenthal
Executive Director, Levees.Org