NEW ORLEANS — A wide range of design and construction defects in levees around New Orleans raise serious doubts that the system can withstand the pounding of another hurricane the size of Katrina, even after $3.1 billion in repairs are completed, a team of independent investigators led by UC Berkeley's civil engineering school said Sunday.
The findings undermine assurances by the Bush administration and the Army Corps of Engineers that the federal levee repair program due to be completed in June will provide a higher level of protection to New Orleans, which sustained 1,293 deaths and more than $100 billion in property loss from Katrina.
The team's 600-page report disputed most of the corps' preliminary findings about what caused the levee breaches, saying the investigators had made critical errors in their analysis.
The mistakes raise concerns about whether the corps is competent to oversee public safety projects across the nation, said Raymond Seed, a UC Berkeley civil engineering professor who led the investigation, which the National Science Foundation sponsored shortly after Katrina struck.
"People think this is a New Orleans problem," Seed said. "It is a national issue."
The Berkeley team found that the defects that caused breaches during Katrina -- including thin layers of soil with the consistency of jelly and sections of levees built with crushed seashells -- had gone undetected and could be widespread.
"The rest of the system is unproven," Seed said. "The entire system needs a serious reevaluation and study."
Though the report questions the corps' competence, Seed said that Congress needed to authorize a comprehensive evaluation of the system and that the corps should conduct it.
The team's report makes 11 major recommendations, such as creating a national flood defense authority and increasing the corps' technical strengths.
According to Seed, the corps' formal investigation has missed critical evidence and has reached incorrect conclusions.
The corps "is conducting the most important engineering analysis in its history" in determining why storm walls and levees around New Orleans failed, Seed said, "and they got it wrong."
"When the entire world is watching and a city has been destroyed, you want to get it right."
A spokesman for the corps said that it could not comment on specific findings until it had a chance to examine the Berkeley report, but that the agency stands by the New Orleans levees and the work of its investigators.
