17th Street Canal breach site photo by Matt Ewalt

Updated Aug 30, 1:47 p.m.

Early this morning, eight years ago, levees and canal walls in and around the City of New Orleans failed far below their design capacity.

Neighborhoods throughout the city region – from St. Bernard Parish to the Lower Ninth Ward to Gentilly to Lakeview – were catastrophically flooded. Over eighteen hundred lost their lives and hundreds of thousands lost their belongings.

But history, both the good and the bad, shall be recorded.

So Levees.org is pleased that the Louisiana State Office of Historic Preservation told us last week that they will work with us toward placing the breach of the 17th Street Canal on the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.

The breach of the 17th Street Canal is the most clear-cut and most non-controversial example of federal negligence in its levee building.

In the 1980s, the Army Corps of Engineers recommended against building a gate at the mouth of the 17th Street Canal and instead recommended raising the heights of the canal walls.

(It is instructive to note that the 17th Street Canal can move more water than the Orleans and London Avenue combined.)

Then, the Corps botched a study and concluded they needed to drive steel sheeting down to depths of only 17 feet instead of 46. The switch to short sheet piles saved the Corps District $100 million.

And on August 29, 2005, the sheet piles in the newly raised canal walls fell over from water that was still 5 feet from the top of the wall.

While the breach of the 17th Street Canal is not a shining example of American civil engineering, it is nonetheless, a historic event. Even if it takes years, Levees.org will continue to work hard to place the breach site on the National Register of Historic Places.

Please take a moment and view this memorial ceremony at the 17th Street Canal breach site. If you’re pressed for time, you can advance to minute 2:00.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnooTnAmo70&list=PL67E5E4B88D674CC1

Want to do more?

Please sign Levees.org’s Letter to the Director of the George Bush Museum and demand that verbiage on the federal failures during Katrina be included in the exhibits.

http://go.levees.org/BushMuseum