ATLANTA — A federal judge in New Orleans today will hear what lawyers call "the last case standing" against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its alleged failure to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters nearly four years ago.
The civil negligence suit was originally filed in April 2006 by five New Orleans-area residents.
They are limited to relatively small damages from the government if they win.
But a victory could result in settlements for tens of thousands of New Orleans residents who have filed claims for personal injury, property damage and wrongful death since the epic flood on Aug. 29, 2005.
"This is sort of the Exxon Valdez litigation of the government liability field," said Oliver Houck, director of Tulane University's Environmental Law Program. "There's never been a case for this much in damages to so many people from such a gross act of government malfeasance."
In 2008, Justice Department officials determined that the federal government could be forced to pay as much as $100 billion in damages over Katrina-related claims and court cases.
Any such payouts would come on top of the more than $34.5 billion in federal rebuilding aid that has been spent or promised for Louisiana, including billions in grants to rebuild damaged homes.
At the heart of the lawsuit is a widely derided navigational channel, built and operated by the Corps, called the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. The plaintiffs claim that faulty construction and maintenance of the channel were key causes of the flooding in three of the hardest-hit neighborhoods -- the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East and St. Bernard Parish.
The canal, known locally as MRGO, was completed in the early 1960s as a shipping shortcut between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. Before Katrina, many locals and some hurricane experts warned that the destruction of wetlands around MRGO eliminated a key brake on advancing storm surges, and created a funnel effect that intensified the surges. The plaintiffs contend that Katrina proved the experts right.
In a court filing, lawyers for the government claimed that "this catastrophic flood would have occurred with or without MRGO."
After Katrina, the government decided to decommission MRGO. A 433,000-ton rock barrier is being built near the gulf entrance to halt ship traffic and prevent inland intrusion of saltwater, which environmentalists blame for killing off the wetlands. Congress has also asked the Corps to produce a plan for restoring the canal to something close to its native state.
