by Gary Taylor
The Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled that that the failure of the Corps of Engineers to properly maintain and operate the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet – a shipping channel dug in the 1960s as a short-cut between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans – was a substantial cause for the failure of the Reach 2 Levee that resulted in the flooding of the Lower 9th Ward and St. Barnard’s Parish during Hurricane Katrina.
The Court also found that the Corps was not negligent with respect to its failure to construct a surge protection barrier at the “funnel” where Reach 2 merges into Reach 1 and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, and thus was not liable for the flooding of New Orleans East. It also found that the Corps was not entitled to immunity under § 702c of the Flood Control Act of 1928 and is not entitled to the protection of the due care, discretionary function, or misrepresentation exceptions under the Federal Torts Claim Act. The court found that plaintiffs in the present case were entitled to $720,000 in damages, but the significance of the case is in the potential billions in damages that the federal government could be liable for if the ruling survives appeals, and the other 100,000 homeowners and business owners follow with lawsuits of their own.
The Court’s decision can be accessed here.
An Associated Press news article can be accessed here.
