For the first time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a conceptual design for a system to provide a 100-year level of storm surge protection in New Orleans. On February 14, the Corps presented a map detailing design elevations for levees, floodwalls and closure structures to provide the promised 100-year level of protection by 2011.
The Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk and Reduction System (HSDRRS) is not the final word on the specifics of location-to-location design and elevations, but rather a big-picture road map that will guide ongoing design and construction. "This is a concept for configuration of the system that can give people a sense of scale about the whole system," says Mike Park, program manager for HSDRRS. "What we build invariably will not be precisely this. This is our best expectation of what the gross configuration will be, but the precise design elements are a work in progress."