Levee liabilities; What went wrong.

As I have posted here and in comments over at LST that levees in New Orleans were a disaster waiting to happen. It would appear that I wasn't the only one that thought that. Ed Morrisey over at Captain's Quarters posts that there had been more than one engineering team assessment that the design of the levee (permeable silt piled on top of more permeable silt) was a bad idea as well. Now, on top of that, in typical Louisianna fashion, he reports there was corruption, kickbacks, and corner cutting involved with thier contruction as well.

The solution is to use the silt that is dredged from the river combined with the rubble that needs to be disposed of anyway to fill in the lowest lying areas before rebuilding is allowed. A levee made of silt with a silt foundation will never be able to protect a city from flooding. As soon as the silt becomes waterlogged it will slough off and fail.