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25–916 PDF 2006

EXPERT VIEWS ON HURRICANE AND

FLOOD PROTECTION AND WATER

RESOURCES PLANNING FOR A REBUILT GULF COAST

(109–36)

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

TRANSPORTATION AND

INFRASTRUCTURE

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 20, 2005

Printed for the use of the

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

(
COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice-Chair

SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey

JERRY MORAN, Kansas

GARY G. MILLER, California

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina

ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

SAM GRAVES, Missouri

MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

TED POE, Texas

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington

CONNIE MACK, Florida

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York

LUIS G. FORTUN ̃ O, Puerto Rico

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JERROLD NADLER, New York

CORRINE BROWN, Florida

BOB FILNER, California

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD,

California

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California

RICK LARSEN, Washington

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine

LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

JOHN BARROW, Georgia

(II)
SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee, Chairman

SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

GARY G. MILLER, California

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania

TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska

TED POE, Texas

CONNIE MACK, Florida

LUIS G. FORTUN ̃ O, Puerto Rico

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana,

Vice-Chair

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

DON YOUNG, Alaska

(Ex Officio)

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JOHN BARROW, Georgia

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota

(Ex Officio)

(III)

(V)

CONTENTS

TESTIMONY

Page

Butler, Raymond, Executive Director, Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association ...... 37

Coffee, Sidney, Executive Assistant to the Governor for Coastal Activities,

Baton Rouge, Louisiana ....................................................................................... 11

Dalrymple, Robert A., Ph.D., P.E., Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor

of Civil Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, on behalf of the American

Society of Civil Engineers .................................................................................... 37

Dokka, Dr. Roy K., Fruehan Endowed Professor of Engineering, Director,

Louisiana Spatial Reference Center and Center for Geoinformatics, Louisiana State University ............................................................................................ 37

Grumbles, Hon. Benjamin H., Assistant Administrator for Water, Environmental Protection Agency .................................................................................... 11

Hoogland, Jan R., Director, Rijkswaterstaat, accompanied by Dale Morris ....... 37

Reed, Dr. Denise J., Professor, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of New Orleans ........................................................................................ 37

Strock, Lieutenant General Carl A., Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps

of Engineers .......................................................................................................... 11

Walker, William W., Executive Director, Mississippi Department of Marine

Resources .............................................................................................................. 11

Woodley, Hon. John Paul, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army, Civil Works,

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ............................................................................ 11

PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS

Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois .......................................................................... 76

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES

Butler, Raymond ...................................................................................................... 54

Coffee, Sidney ........................................................................................................... 59

Dalrymple, Robert A ................................................................................................ 77

Dokka, Dr. Roy K. .................................................................................................... 87

Grumbles, Hon. Benjamin H. ................................................................................. 100

Hoogland, Jan R. ..................................................................................................... 119

Reed, Dr. Denise J. .................................................................................................. 133

Strock, Lieutenant General Carl A. ....................................................................... 142

Walker, William W .................................................................................................. 146

Woodley, Hon. John Paul, Jr .................................................................................. 154

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD

Rounsavall, Mark, Director, Rural Community Assistance Program of the

Community Resource Group, Inc., statement .................................................... 163

Williams. S. Jeffress, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior,

statement .............................................................................................................. 170

(1)

EXPERT VIEWS ON HURRICANE AND FLOOD

PROTECTION AND WATER RESOURCES

PLANNING FOR A REBUILT GULF COAST

Thursday, October 20, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON TRANSPOR- TATION AND, INFRASTRUCTURE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON

WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2167,

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John J. Duncan [chairman of

the committee] presiding.

Mr. DUNCAN. I want to welcome everyone to the second hearing,

and I think a very, very important hearing in the Water Resources

and Environment Subcommittee on the response to Hurricane

Katrina.

On Tuesday, in a joint hearing with the Economic Development,

Public Buildings and Emergency Management Subcommittee, we

heard from Governor Blanco, Lieutenant Governor Landrieu and

Mayor Nagin, as well as community and industry leaders, on their

visions for rebuilding New Orleans. All of the witnesses eloquently

expressed their strong desire to make New Orleans safe so its people will come back and its economy will revive.

To achieve this, Mayor Nagin said providing category 5 hurricane

protection is one of his top priorities. However, both the Mayor and

the Governor admitted that they do not yet have a rebuilding plan,

and some neighborhoods may have to be relocated instead of rebuilt. In New Orleans and southern Louisiana, decisions about hurricane and flood protection cannot be made in isolation. These decisions must consider the need to protect people and property, maintain navigation, protect oil and gas infrastructure and sustain fisheries and wildlife habitat. Today’s hearing focuses on these issues.

On the first panel, we will hear from the Corps of Engineers, the

EPA and representatives from the State of Louisiana and the State

of Mississippi. On the second panel, we will hear from engineering,

geology, marsh restoration and navigation experts.

I hope these witnesses will be able to provide the Subcommittee

with information on feasible options for providing hurricane protection for the Gulf Coast. This information will help guide the Committee’s response to requests from the State of Louisiana and Mississippi and others for new authorizations.

The State of Louisiana is asking Congress to direct the Corps of

Engineers to build category 5 hurricane protection for New Orleans

and the entire coast of Louisiana at a total cost of about $18 billion. It probably would run higher than that. And to build the
2

State’s coastal restoration plan at a total cost of $14 billion or even

higher at full Federal expense and with no feasibility analysis.

The State also is asking Congress to authorize and appropriate

all of this funding right now, as an emergency expense, on top of

the $62 billion of emergency Katrina response funding that has already been appropriated. In fact, as everyone knows, some people

have talked about spending as much as $250 billion overall for the

problems caused by Hurricane Katrina. I don’t believe that the

Congress can or will appropriate anywhere close to that much

money in response to this disaster.

This type of funding is just not going to happen, not because

Congress does not want to help New Orleans and the State of Louisiana and the other areas affected, in fact, as I mentioned a couple

of days ago, I think we saw the worst damage in the State of Mississippi. But I think this is not going to happen because it would

be inconsistent with our responsibility to the taxpayers to ensure

that these projects are in the Federal interest and technically feasible and economically justified.

Right now, we don’t have enough information to make all these

determinations. We can work with the Corps and the State to

streamline the process, but we cannot abandon our responsibilities

by authorizing a black box and letting other people decide how taxpayer dollars should be spent.

In fact, we do not even know why the Katrina storm surge

breached the existing levees in New Orleans. I have also read articles that insurance companies have obligations anywhere from $20

billion to $100 billion and we need to make sure that they fulfill

their obligations. Of course, they seem to be fudging as much as

possible up to this point.

If the reason why these levees were breached, turns out to be

weak soil conditions; that will radically change how the Corps can

design and engineer hurricane protection. Building higher levees

may not be technically feasible. The only feasible option for providing New Orleans with category 5 hurricane protection from storm

surges coming from Lake Pontchartrain may be the barrier gates

that Congress authorized in 1965. Construction of these gates was

halted by various lawsuits through the 1960s and 1970s, about 20

years worth.

A very rough estimate of the cost of building the barriers at the

mouth of Lake Pontchartrain and raising some levees to provide

category 5 protection for the city of New Orleans from storm surges

is about $5.5 billion and probably higher. This investment is probably justified under traditional cost benefit analysis. If not, it is

probably justified because New Orleans is below sea level, increasing the risk of flooding and the consequences of the citizens’ failure

to evacuate.

I am not aware of any economic risk or consequence justification

for providing category 5 hurricane protection along the entire coast

of Louisiana. If there is a justification, we need to hear it and then

apply the same standards nationwide. That is one of the considerations that we have to deal with because we are starting to get requests from all over the Nation because of the heightened levels of

concern because of the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
3

For example, the city of Sacramento, California has almost twice

as many people as New Orleans. Yet it has less flood protection

than any other city in America. Cities like Houston, St. Louis and

Miami are also at risk. We cannot treat citizens of these cities differently unless we have a policy reason that we can explain and

justify to our constituents.

If Congress decides to build hurricane protection projects in Louisiana at full Federal expense with no justification and no feasibility studies, we must be prepared to do the same for thousands of

miles of coastline across the Country, and that simply would not

be possible. There is not enough money in the Federal Treasury to

do everything that everyone wants us to do.

I have similar concerns about the request for full authorization

of funding of the State’s Coast 2050 plan. That plan is a framework

for directing further study, but it is not a building plan. Restoring

the coastal Louisiana marsh lands is very important, but before

spending billions of taxpayer dollars, we have to make sure that

the projects will work.

Geologists tell us that the Louisiana coastline is sinking. This

may limit our ability to engineer a new coastline. We also need to

make sure that adverse impacts on navigation and flood protection

and oyster beds are held to a minimum. In addition, Congress may

want to invest in marsh restoration in areas that will protect oil

and gas infrastructure. Although this is used as a reason to justify

spending on the Louisiana coastal restoration, the Corps plan and

the State’s plans were formulated as ecosystem restoration plans,

not hurricane protection projects. We have no analysis that shows

that the proposed projects will protect oil and gas infrastructure.

Finally, we need to work with the State of Louisiana on appropriate cost sharing. We understand that the economy of New Orleans and southern Louisiana has been devastated. That may be a

reason to defer cost sharing in the near term.

Under current law, the Secretary of the Army may allow the

non-Federal private sponsor to defer payment of the local cost sharing during project construction without accruing interest and may

allow payment of the local share over a period of time up to 30

years with interest. Rather than waiving cost sharing, perhaps the

Secretary of the Army should use this existing authority to ensure

that Louisiana hurricane protection projects can proceed while the

State’s economy recovers, but without waiving all of the cost sharing rules and doing all of this work at total Federal expense.

There are a lot more issues that I hope and I know we will discuss with the witnesses, both today and in our hearing next week.

But let me now apologize for the length of that statement and turn

to the Ranking Member, Ms. Johnson, who will give her opening

statement.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Today’s

hearing is the second in a series of three hearings to examine the

devastating effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, how we might

go about rebuilding and protecting the Gulf Coast communities and

the Nation’s hurricane damage and flood damage reduction programs.

On Tuesday, we heard from Governor Blanco, Mayor Nagin and

others on their vision to a rebuilt New Orleans. Obviously, our re-
4

sponse will extend to the entire Gulf Coast. But the intensity of the

human impact is so great in New Orleans that it serves as a good

starting point for the examination.

Today we will hear from Federal and other witnesses concerning

how we might actually go about rebuilding and protecting New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. If Tuesday represented the what, then

today begins the how. Rebuilding the Gulf Coast will require

thoughtful solutions, not unlike the massive efforts to address

flooding of the Mississippi River in the last century.

However, we must be careful to avoid the mistakes and unintended consequences of that effort. For example, the very success

of the flood protection project for the lower Mississippi valley continues to contribute to the loss of coastal wetlands that are crucial

to protection from hurricanes.

As we heard in Tuesday’s hearing, our State and local partners

must make decisions on how and where to rebuild. Then we must

join together to determine how best to provide sufficient protection

from hurricanes and floods, so that the devastation we witnessed

does not occur again. We must ensure that we do not repeat the

shortcomings that contributed to the devastation. If we build levees, they must hold. If we build barriers, they must respect the environment and not threaten our communities. We must be sure

that the poor are not denied the opportunity to return to the coast

and are afforded protection at least as great as the affluent.

However, this effort is more than levees, flood walls, surge barriers, wetlands and barrier islands. It is about anticipating the

needs of the communities. It is about making sure that the economic benefits of the rebuilding efforts accrue to local business interests. We must ensure that money spent in the coastal area stays

in the coastal area and does not enhance the balance sheets of

multi-national corporations.

Contracting must be transparent and available to local firms. As

Mayor Nagin stated, rebuilding economic activity is central to rebuilding the area. Rebuilding is also about ensuring that the workers who return to the area are afforded the opportunity to earn a

fair wage for a fair day’s work and that all labor protections are

provided. How can we tell a worker who lost his home and everything he has or she has that they can’t have a job or if they are

hired, they can be paid less than prevailing wages?

As we heard on Tuesday, the economy and therefore the people

of the Gulf Coast can recover if given a hand up. It is our responsibility to provide that in a way that protects the people, the environment, the community and the culture that is an integral part

of our one Nation.

Mr. Chairman, addressing the societal and infrastructure shortcomings that were laid bare by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita will

be a monumental task. It will cost several billions of dollars, take

many years and is likely to cause permanent change in the lives

and lifestyles of the Gulf Coast region. We need to do our best to

make sure that all the changes in the Gulf Coast region are positive.

I look forward to today’s testimony and thank you again for calling the hearing.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Johnson. Mr. Gilchrest.
5

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will just be very

brief. I appreciate this hearing, the witnesses that you have called,

your opening statement. What some of us are going to be looking

for is understanding over the last literally maybe 250 years, certainly over the last 100 years, that we have re-engineered the ecological system of the mid-section of the United States and the Gulf

of Mexico along coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida

and Texas. We re-engineered sediment diversion, we have re-engineered marsh creation, we have re-engineered the barrier islands,

shoreline protection, the hydrology, the vegetation. We have re-engineered that part of the world, totally re-engineered it.

So what we are going to have to do with 2050 and the Louisiana

coastal restoration projects and all the other myriad of things that

need to be done is to understand what we did and then try to piece

that thing back together in an extraordinary, in what we have just

heard, an enormous task ahead of us, which is going to cost billions

of dollars.

I am not sure how many meteorologists, climatologists, hydrologists, wildlife biologists, wetland biologists, coastal barrier scientists were in on the first engineering project. But we sure need

them on this engineering project, and we certainly know that the

oil and gas industry needs to be protected, the people need to be

protected. We don’t want to give up the wildlife, the ecosystem, the

magnificent place of this area of the United States. And there are

some things we don’t have any control over, so we have to factor

that into the equation.

Right now, basically we have no control over climate change. We

have no control over plate tectonics. We have no control over sea

level rise. So I hope those factors are statistically factored into the

modeling of how much we can restore the Gulf of Mexico, the Louisiana coast, over the next 50 years. And the Chairman mentioned

the 2050 project. Along with that, we have CWPRA spending over

the last decade or so, and then we have this LCA or LCR, whatever

that is called on top of all of that. Then I understand that we can

only save about 50 percent of the coastal area between now and

2050 with every effort at full throttle.

So Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the call of this hearing. And we

want to be helpful, this Committee wants to be helpful. But we

want to make sure that the number of people that are participating

in this project is enough, we have enough scientific expertise to get

our hands around this comprehensive, complicated issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Gilchrest. Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate, again, in your opening statement, the way that you

expressed the challenge. I apologize in advance: I have been working for the last five years in the flood insurance issue and there

is a concurrent hearing going on dealing with fine tuning of that.

I will be shuttling back and forth. But I wanted to be here to express my appreciation for what you and the Ranking Member have

been focusing on, this series of hearings. As Ranking Member

Johnson pointed out, you also have to consider the human dimension as well as the practical, and I think that is very important.
6

This is an issue that goes beyond the Gulf and recovery. We have

been having these conversations with our friends in the Corps, on

my part, for the last five or six years, and they are trying to look

at the big picture. We have 70 percent of the American public that

is at risk of one or more natural hazards, of which flooding is only

the most common. But we have earthquakes, we have coastal erosion that is a national issue over the next 50 years. We are going

to be seeing coastlines eroding.

And I appreciate the focus here on how we look at the big picture, how we look at the cost, how we use existing resources in the

Corps, how we use the rebuilding process to learn from it, make

the community stronger, and energize them economically if it is

done right. And it is important that we as a Committee don’t duck

the hard answers to the difficult questions that we are asking and

exploring.

This whole notion of cost effectiveness that was offered up with

good intention actually may well have a perverse effect, because it

really doesn’t enable us to focus on the consequences of human loss

of life and injury, and because of a narrow definition of cost effectiveness that invites local boosterism is natural.

It has actually promoted projects that probably put more people

at risk, that create more problems over the long haul and are really

difficult to get our hands around. We need to revisit this—and I

will only say once about the principles and guidelines that after 25

years need to be updated. But these are things that we should capture so we don’t put the Corps in the cross-fire.

I deeply appreciate all the previous members talking about the

ecosystem and the big picture. Because if we don’t get this right,

we don’t have enough money to buy concrete and to rebuild. We

have to harness the forces of nature to solve the problems by the

destructive forces of the nature that are visited upon us.

I do think that this can be a national model with the leadership

that we are seeing from this Committee. We can establish principles that will save lives, will save the environment and will save

the Treasury money. I deeply appreciate the way that you are

structuring this common sense, thoughtful approach. I just hope

that we as a Committee are willing to bite the bullet on some of

these controversial solutions that are going to come out so that we

empower people to do their job right.

Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much.

Dr. Boustany.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Chairman Duncan, I want to thank you for convening this hearing today. As Vice Chair of the Subcommittee, I

applaud your leadership in holding this whole series of hearings examining the devastation that was caused by Hurricanes Katrina

and Rita.

I think it is important as we go forward to look at the future implications for flood control, hurricane protection in the broad sense,

just as my colleague just mentioned, looking at ecosystems and so

forth.

But I have to say, and I think all of us would agree, that the top

priority in rebuilding the great City of New Orleans will be providing a safe environment in which businesses can grow and return.

Critical to that is going to be providing safety, because if we don’t
7

do it, insurers will not return to this market, and we will see a

completely failure economically. So protecting New Orleans from

future flooding is really at the heart of the matter.

I know the Corps is well underway in its work to repair the levee

system and the damage, and you have done a magnificent job

under very adverse conditions, and I applaud your efforts. But this

is only going to take us back to pre-Katrina levels, so we need to

look and make sure that we can rebuild New Orleans safely and

a safe levee system to prepare for future category 5 storms.

As the Subcommittee staff has recommended, and I have reviewed previous testimony going back to 1965, it has been pointed

out that many options have been discussed for providing more extensive hurricane protection. All of these have consequences and

tradeoffs, so we need to consider all of these very carefully. I personally believe we need to revisit the feasibility of the Lake Pontchartrain barrier plan that Congress initially authorized in 1965.

We need to update this plan.

As we move forward, I do want to work with the Chairman to

ensure that the Corps develops a comprehensive, peer-reviewed

levee plan with an expedited and specified time frame, not only for

the plan, but for the implementation. I agree, time is of the essence

in this. And I believe those should be our guiding principles.

While much of the media post-Katrina was focused on the flooding in New Orleans, we cannot ignore the devastation inflicted

upon the entire Gulf Coast. Hurricane Rita made landfall in my

district. Cameron Parish was completely destroyed with massive

flooding and hurricane force winds. Vermilion Parish, which is a

parish that has extensive agricultural property—rice, sugar cane,

cattle—had extensive flooding. Crops were destroyed by saltwater

intrusion, homes were lifted from their foundations. We need to

consider this area of the State as well.

The storm surge from Hurricane Rita impacted regions as far as

40 miles inland. Scientists estimate that storm surge in a hurricane is reduced by one to three feet for every two miles of coastal

wetlands. This needs to be considered as we move forward.

Over 15,000 acres of Louisiana are lost each year to coastal erosion. United States Geological Survey estimates the State has lost

about 1.22 million acres of coastal wetlands in the past 70 years,

roughly the equivalent area to the State of Delaware.

I have worked closely with the Chairman and members of this

Committee and staff as we drafted the 2005 Water Resources Development Act to include funding for a number of vital restoration

projects in coastal Louisiana. I appreciate the Subcommittee’s support on all of this.

I also want to say that much of this was focused in southeast

Louisiana, and we can’t neglect southwest Louisiana. Restoring

Louisiana’s coast is not just a public safety issue, it is not just a

Louisiana issue, it is a key economic issue for all Americans.

Eighty percent of our Nation’s offshore oil and gas is produced off

the Louisiana coast. Twenty-five percent of foreign and domestic oil

used in this Country comes ashore through Louisiana ports.

In the little town of Henry in Vermilion Parish is a natural gas

facility that accounts for 49 percent of natural gas production in

this Country, but it is out of commission. Still out of commission.
8

If we don’t get this up and running, we are going to see major

spikes in natural gas prices.

More than 25 percent of our seafood that is consumed in the U.S.

comes through Louisiana.

So I appreciate the Subcommittee holding this series of hearings.

I appreciate Chairman Duncan’s leadership on this. I look forward

to working with the Chairman as we address a number of these

issues, and I look forward to hearing all of your testimony. Thank

you very much.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Boustany. You have

been a very active member of this Subcommittee, and I appreciate

your work as Vice Chairman. As we have mentioned before, there

is no bill in the history of the Congress that potentially does more

with regard to hurricane and flood protection and ecosystem restoration than does the Water Resources and Development Act, the

WRDA bill that we have passed once again in the House. And the

Senate needs to move on that, if they really want to help out in

a very specific way. Because we have many sections of the WRDA

bill that deal with a lot of the things that Dr. Boustany just mentioned.

Mr. Pascrell.

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank you and Ranking Member Johnson for getting

us together in this hearing today. Why do we need a national catastrophe to take care of parts of the infrastructure that Chairman

Duncan has been talking about and many other people have been

talking about for years? It is pretty mind-boggling. Why do we need

a national catastrophe to expose the neglect of the poor and the neglect of our infrastructure?

So Water Resources and the Environment Subcommittee has not

been listened to. And I think we need to understand that, and will

it be any different tomorrow? So it has been four years since 9/11.

It has been three years since we created the Homeland Security

Department. The utter lack of preparation and pathetic emergency

response we saw with Katrina is wholly unacceptable.

If I had the time, I would quote the words of Governor Bush of

Florida yesterday who appeared before Homeland Security and

what he thinks about the preparedness.

In every step of this catastrophe, the Federal response has been

consistently and utterly behind the curve. The opportunity to show

what the Federal Government can do for preparation and immediate response has passed us by, and millions have suffered because of that failure. It is imperative that this Committee and the

agencies on this panel help ensure that for long term response the

Federal Government will properly assist in the rebuilding of the

Gulf Coast.

It is also imperative that this Committee continue to call attention to the larger issue of the need of infrastructure investments

nationwide, not just in the Gulf. We can’t control mother nature.

Flood mitigation projects could have reduced the number of deaths

and limited the economic devastation around the Gulf. That is either true or false, what I have just said. I want to repeat it, I want

to emphasize it, because we are accessories to the crime. Flood
9

mitigation projects could have reduced the number of deaths and

limited the economic devastation around the Gulf.

We can’t be halfway on this. It is either right or wrong. I will

stand corrected if you prove me wrong.

Cutting the Army Corp’s budget is the favorite pastime of the Office of Management and Budget under administrations that are

both Democratic and Republican. It is a favorite pastime. Do you

know what it is like? It is like what happens in towns all across

America when it comes time to tighten your belt, particularly in

boards of education or cities. The first thing they do is cut the library’s budget. Then they cut the sports recreation budget. So it is

like an automatic knee jerk.

We are jerks, all right, for not understanding the significance of

the Corps. And I tell you one thing, I don’t think the Corps fought

enough against those budget cuts. I was here, Duncan was here,

Johnson—we were all here. A more robust highway and transit

system could have done a better job, allowing movement of people

out from the region and supplies into the region. In the coming

months, we will need massive infrastructure investments to meet

transportation and water resources needs, not only in New Orleans, but nationwide.

God help us if we take the little that the poor have left in that

area so that we prioritize and move to other resources, so we cut

off our nose to spite our face. God help us if we do that in the next

four or five days in this House. Why don’t we start with Medicaid?

We can find a lot of money in Medicaid, put some more money into

the Army Corps of Engineers. On the street, there is a name for

that kind of stuff.

The question remains, will our priorities be affected by Katrina?

Let us not only rebuild the Gulf, we are committed to that, we have

heard enough commitments. But let’s rebuild and upgrade the infrastructure throughout our Nation. As we know, devastation from

natural or man-made disasters can happen any time. Our Nation’s

economic competitiveness and our citizens’ quality of life depend on

if we have learned our lesson and how we choose to respond.

Thank you again, Chairman. I think that hopefully somebody in

leadership will be listening to you this time.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Pascrell. I always admire and respect your statements so much. With your experience

as mayor of a major city, I think you understand some of these

problems far better than most people in the Congress. I appreciate

that.

Mr. Brown.

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding this

hearing today and I appreciate very much this panel coming and

giving us some insight on what is happening down in the Gulf

Coast. I was down there a couple of weeks ago, I know it is a real

challenge for not only that community, but for the whole United

States.

Having said that, I represent South Carolina, which is also a

hurricane-prone region. My good friend from Louisiana just stated

about being proactive, and trying to help, at least lessen some of

the storm damage. I know that our big issue, I represent about 160

miles of the coast, is beach renourishment. I certainly would hope,
10

Mr. Woodley, that you would not, and General Strock, would not

give up on the fact that we really need to be proactive. Because it

has been proven that those beaches that are renourished certainly

have less damage when those storms coming. We can’t prevent the

storms from coming, but we can deal proactively in the process.

So thank you all for coming, and I am certainly anxious to listen

to you.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Brown.

Probably the most active member of this Committee in regard to

Hurricane Katrina and all the damage and all the problems that

have resulted is Chairman Shuster, who I think was the first member of our Committee to go to the scene, possibly along with Congressman LoBiondo. At any rate, Chairman Shuster co-chaired the

hearing with me on Tuesday, and we are certainly pleased to have

him here with us now. Chairman Shuster.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank all of you

for being here today. This is an important hearing for a number of

reasons, to find out what happened. I don’t think we have determined why yet, I have heard some theories that maybe a barge hit,

and the General and I spoke about that a little bit, but at that

point, we weren’t sure what happened.

As we move forward, what to do, do we build the levees back to

withstand a category 3 or a category 5? The levees will stand, but

will the houses that we are leaving there withstand a category 5?

And questions about does it make sense to rebuild parts of the city,

and we are going to rebuild, I am sure, the majority of New Orleans, but maybe there are sections that with your expert testimony

here and moving forward, are there parts that maybe we shouldn’t

build. There are a lot of questions that I am looking forward to

hearing the answers.

Again, I want to thank all of you for being here today and I look

forward to hearing your testimony. Thank you.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.

The first panel is a very distinguished panel, consisting of the

Honorable John Paul Woodley, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army

for Civil Works of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who has been

with us on several occasions. Also, in fact the first three witnesses,

General Strock and Administrator Grumbles has been with us several times, too.

The second witness will be Lieutenant General Carl A. Strock,

the Chief of Engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The

third witness will be the Honorable Benjamin H. Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water of the Environmental Protection Agency. Then we have Ms. Sidney Coffee, the Executive Assistant to the

Governor for Coastal Activities, from Baton Rouge. And finally, Dr.

William W. Walker, who is the Executive Director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, from Biloxi, Mississippi.

Thank you very much for being with us, and Secretary Woodley,

you may begin your testimony. All full statements will be placed

in the record. You are allowed to summarize and then we will get

to the questions.
11

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN PAUL WOODLEY, JR.,

ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY, CIVIL WORKS, U.S.

ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS; LIEUTENANT GENERAL CARL

A. STROCK, CHIEF OF ENGINEERS, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS; HONORABLE BENJAMIN H. GRUMBLES, ASSISTANT

ADMINISTRATOR FOR WATER, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; SIDNEY COFFEE, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO

THE GOVERNOR FOR COASTAL ACTIVITIES, BATON ROUGE,

LOUISIANA; WILLIAM W. WALKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF MARINE RESOURCES

Mr. WOODLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.

I am John Paul Woodley, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army for

Civil Works. I am delighted to be here with the Committee again

today, along with Lieutenant General Carl Strock, my colleague,

the 51st Chief of Engineers.

The thorough analysis and much thoughtful consideration of alternatives and careful attention as to how best to integrate future

protection objectives with one another and with the coastal wetlands ecosystem will guide future consideration and decision making in reconstruction of the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The President has pledged the support of the Corps of Engineers

to work with the State, city and parish officials to make the flood

damage reduction system better and these local officials will have

a large part to play in the engineering decisions to come.

Our first and most urgent need is to assess the performance of

the hurricane projects in place at the time of the Katrina and Rita

storm events. We will use these findings to ensure that restoration

plans for existing hurricane protection features are technically

sound, will have efficacy and can be accomplished in a way that is

environmentally acceptable.

Information developed by the forensic analysis and from performance assessments must be available in time to be integrated into

the design, engineering and reconstruction of existing hurricane

and flood protection features for New Orleans that are to be completed before the beginning of the next year’s hurricane season. In

this regard, the Corps is already very hard at work, having established an interagency performance evaluation task force to collect

and assess information.

In addition, the Secretary of Defense has directed the Secretary

of the Army to convene an independent, multi-disciplinary panel of

acknowledged national and international experts from the public

and private sectors and academia under the auspices of the National Academies of Science and the National Academy of Engineering, to evaluate the information collected and assess the performance of the hurricane protection systems in New Orleans and

surrounding areas. The National Academies will report directly to

me, and their study is expected to take approximately eight months

to complete.

All reports, Mr. Chairman, generated by these panels, will be

made available to this body and to the public, of course.

While the forensic analysis may recommend ways to improve the

performance of the hurricane protection system at the currently authorized level of protection, more analysis and a broader range of

considerations are required to determine the most efficient, effec-
12

tive and practical ways to increase the level of protection for this

urban area. The President has pledged that Federal funds will

cover a large measure of the costs of repairing public infrastructure

in the disaster zones, from roads and bridges to schools and water

systems. Certainly if called upon, the Corps of Engineers and the

Army as a whole is ready to execute a broad array of engineering

construction and contract management services.

We are especially mindful that the coastal wetlands ecosystem

can provide a buffer against the impact of some storms. The coastal

wetlands are the literal, figurative and conceptual foundation upon

which future potential hurricane, flood protection and other development infrastructure must be integrated. The Administration is

working with Congress and the State of Louisiana to develop appropriate generic authorizations for the Louisiana coastal area ecosystem protection and restoration program. They will expedite the

approval process for projects and their implementation while providing greater flexibility in setting future priorities and increased

opportunities for application of adaptive management decision

making.

Such an integrated, programmatic approach to coastal wetlands

protection and restoration is essential for efficiency and efficacy.

The same approach should be considered in a process that allows

for a holistic solution to challenges presented in New Orleans and

coastal Louisiana.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my statement.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Secretary Woodley.

General Strock.

General STROCK. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee,

I am Lieutenant General Carl Strock. I am the Chief of Engineers

and Commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

I am honored to appear before the Committee today to testify on

the potential role of the Corps of Engineers in the rebuilding of

New Orleans. The people and the infrastructure of the Gulf Coast

have suffered a catastrophe, and we also recognize that the national economy has been dramatically affected by this disaster. We

and the rest of the Federal family are absolutely committed to

doing everything we can to provide the needed assistance in setting

the conditions for a full and rapid recovery.

We are continuing to execute our missions under the Federal

Emergency Management Agency. New Orleans is essentially dry.

We are working hard to provide interim protection for the remainder of the system and our goal is to restore to pre-Katrina levels

of protection by the beginning of the next hurricane system next

June. Navigation has largely been restored across the entire Gulf

Coast to its pre-storm condition with great assistance from the U.S.

Coast Guard, NOAA, State and industry partners.

We are currently mapping damage and collecting data for analysis of the performance of the system. We are doing this with our

own engineering research and development center, with the National Science Foundation, with the American Society for Civil Engineers, and with an independent study by Louisiana State University. This analysis is to ensure that restoration is accomplished in

the most technically sound, the most environmentally sustainable

and the most economic manner.
13

In addition, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army has requested the National Academies to conduct a forensic analysis. This will include an independent peer review of the analysis performed by the Corps of Engineers and others. The purpose is to assess the performance of the system during

the storm, to evaluate its performance and recovery from the

storm, to identify any weaknesses in the system and then to recommend improvements. We expect this study should take about

eight months to complete.

In his address to the Nation last month, the President committed

to helping the citizens of the Gulf Coast rebuild their communities.

The Corps is prepared to assist in that in many ways. We are replacing hundreds of public buildings in Mississippi, police and fire

departments, city halls and other governmental buildings.

Yesterday I was in De Lisle, where I visited a middle and high

school that had just opened after 15 days of effort by a Corps of

Engineers team. Twelve hundred students are back at their desks

now. This is critical, because it allows families to come home and

it allows the children to continue their education, and it allows

their parents the opportunity to focus on rebuilding their lives and

livelihoods without worrying about their childrens’ welfare.

The President also committed to rebuilding communities better

and stronger than before the storm. Certainly local and State officials will have the lead in planning that effort. But the Corps will

work with them to provide better and stronger flood and storm

damage reduction systems to support their efforts.

The design of a stronger hurricane and flood protection system

for New Orleans is an extremely complex task. We completed a reconnaissance study in 2002 and concluded there is a Federal interest in increased protection.

A feasibility study would normally now be necessary to consider

the full suite of alternatives. We would anticipate this study would

cost approximately $12 million, would normally be cost shared with

a local sponsor, 50-50. We would obviously expedite the study.

Even with expediting, we think this study may take from two to

three years to complete, depending on negotiation of the cost sharing agreement and availability of Federal and non-Federal funding.

So I would like to close by echoing Mr. Woodley’s comments and

those of many of the panel members on the importance of coastal

wetlands to hurricane protection. As we evaluate and possibly implement structural changes to the hurricane protection system in

the New Orleans area, we must not lose sight of the important role

that barrier islands and wetlands play in the Louisiana coastal

area. While there is adequate justification for coastal wetlands restoration for a host of reasons, it is certain that these features will

continue to provide a critical, natural component of the storm damage reduction system.

Again, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the Committee. I want to assure you that we will remain focused on this important regional and national effort. Thank you, sir.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, General Strock.

Administrator Grumbles.

Mr. GRUMBLES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is my pleasure to

appear before the Committee.
14

I know first-hand the passion and sincerity of the members of the

Committee when it comes to the importance of investing in and

sustaining the Nation’s infrastructure. I am here on behalf of the

U.S. EPA to talk about our role and responsibilities in the aftermath, as well as what we have done throughout since the hurricanes hit, and to focus on the water resources planning in a rebuilt

Gulf Coast.

Mr. Chairman, the bottom line from an EPA perspective on this

subject is that we must learn from and not lose sight of the importance of sustainability, sustainable infrastructure and also the importance of wetlands barriers and buffers. So that is the primary

message from an EPA perspective, as we work with our partners

at the State level and the local level and our partners at the Federal level, particularly the Army Corps of Engineers is to focus on

and take advantage of this unique moment in history like never before to focus on sustainability, sustainable infrastructure, both

man-made and natural infrastructure, the green infrastructure.

U.S. EPA was involved days before Hurricane Katrina actually

hit land. There was pre-deployment and a coordinated effort with

our colleagues, FEMA and other agencies, Federal, State and local.

Mr. Chairman, the focus throughout this whole effort has been to

approach this from a perspective of compassion, coordination and

common sense. Compassion focused primarily on the emergency

rescue at the initial stages of response. As we move into the recovery stage and the long term recovery stage, that is also where it

really requires a great deal of common sense and coordination.

I would just say that EPA has various responsibilities under the

Stafford Act, and in coordination with the Army Corps clearly,

Army Corps is in the lead when it comes to ESF-#3, the Public

Works and Engineering. We coordinate as well with FEMA on the

ESF-#14, which is really the long term community recovery. But

our particular lead area of focus is on hazardous materials response and spills, ESF-#10. The EPA has been extremely involved

in monitoring the quality of floodwaters, monitoring the impacts on

aquatic ecosystems, such as Lake Pontchartrain, coordinating with

the Army Corps, with our State partners, not just in Louisiana but

certainly Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, to measure the impacts

of these natural catastrophic events.

We have also been working with NOAA and other organizations

at the State and local and Federal level, USGS, on monitoring fish

tissue impacts, to measure the contaminants, status and trends of

contaminants after these hurricanes.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that when it comes to drinking

water and water infrastructure, one of the most important steps is

to get an accurate and fair assessment of the damage. We know

that when Hurricane Katrina hit, for instance, that there were over

700 facilities, drinking water facilities, that were impacted, many

of them rendered completely inoperative. There were over 200, approximately 218 wastewater treatment facilities, including 6 from

the State of Texas, that were rendered inoperable after Hurricane

Rita as well as Katrina.

Though a lot of progress has been made over the last several

weeks, it will take time, it will take money and it will take coordination. But a key aspect is to get an accurate assessment and then
15

to get in touch with the right people, to make sure that the energy

is brought in to get the pumps operating again, that the necessary

chemicals, chlorine and other are available, and that the technical

know-how is available to get systems online and operational.

In New Orleans, in particular, for me November 15th is an extremely important date. That is the date that the East Bank Sewage Treatment Plant is expected to reach secondary treatment. On

October 16th, they became operational with primary treatment.

Secondary treatment under the Clean Water Act is required, and

November 15th is the day for that. We are committed to providing

every resource we can to help them meet that date.

The other thing I would like to touch on, Mr. Chairman, is the

critically important component of wetlands buffers and barriers.

Every member that I have heard from in this hearing and every

witness so far has emphasized the importance of restoring those

natural infrastructure components, restoring and protecting the

wetlands. EPA is very proud of the efforts we played with the

Army Corps and with other agencies in implementation of the

Breaux Act, the Coastal Wetlands Protection Restoration Act. That

is a very important authority to provide funding for projects to protect wetlands.

There is also the important component of barrier island restoration. I look forward to working in full partnership with the Army

Corps to continue to advance this notion of beneficial use of

dredged material. I think this is a great opportunity to really emphasize that point.

Last point, Mr. Chairman, is just simply the importance of working together to focus on ecosystem restoration as well as sustainable development. I know I am out of time, I just wanted to mention two things. One is a report that was done by CDC and U.S.

EPA in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit. That report is available on our web site. It is an environmental health and habitability

needs assessment. Its purpose was to lay out, with experts involved

in the process, to layout 13 key environmental areas that should

be looked at and be used as a blueprint to ensure that as people

reoccupy New Orleans that the area is habitable. That is an important guideline for decisions, I think, and can be useful for local as

well as Federal agencies.

The last point is that EPA and NOAA entered into a memorandum of agreement a year ago on smart growth, smart and sustainable development in coastal areas. We are committed to working

with NOAA to follow through on that, not through regulation at

the Federal top-down level, Mr. Chairman, but through providing

technical assistance and resources to help in the local and State

planning effort to avoid putting people in harm’s way.

Thank you very much. I would be happy to answer questions at

the end of the panel.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Administrator Grumbles.

Ms. Coffee.

Ms. COFFEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the

Committee, for allowing me to speak to you today. I serve as Executive Assistant to Governor Blanco for Coastal Activities.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for your interest in the

New Orleans situation and surrounding region. I want each mem-
16

ber of this Committee to know that the people of Louisiana understand that recovery and future prosperity will take great tenacity

and perseverance on our part. That said, all of us also realize the

size of this catastrophe cannot be done, we can’t go it alone. We

are going to need assistance from our friends, our neighbors and

our Government.

Along with this assistance comes obligation. We want to steward

those generous resources as efficiently and effectively as possible

and want to assure you that the State of Louisiana is committed

to spending every dollar properly and to making the most of every

dollar.

After years of predicting the scenario that would happen if the

big one ever hit New Orleans, we find ourselves in the aftermath

not only of Katrina but also of Rita in what is now a tragedy of

such magnitude that its economic and social ripples will continue

to impact the fabric of this Nation for many years to come.

We have known for decades that the dramatic land loss occurring

in south Louisiana continues to directly impact the safety and sustainability of this region. We sounded the alarm repeatedly that

the loss of Louisiana’s coast, what is now recognized as America’s

wetland, is indeed an emergency and its restoration merits immediate attention, not just because of the inherent safety it provides

our communities, but because it protects the Nation’s number one

port system, it safeguards our critical energy infrastructure, and it

is home to a third of the fisheries in the lower 48 States, just to

name three reasons.

This is an overwhelming challenge, but we know for certain that

the citizens and businesses must feel safe that they are going to

have a certain level of protection before they can return and reinvest in their communities and rebuild. In a meeting last week, New

Orleans business leaders made it very clear that without increased

hurricane protection, they could not return.

Therefore, we are seeking support for category 5 hurricane protection that integrates coastal restoration for region-wide, long

term protection. Restoring our coastal wetlands is an integral part

of this long term solution, incorporating water quality issues, reducing the dead zone and perhaps most importantly, reducing the

storm surge.

It is true, scientists tell us that for every 2.7 miles of wetlands,

storm surge height can be reduced by 1 foot. However, we continue

to lose our wetlands at the rate of 24 square miles a year.

Hurricane protection must be done in concert with coastal restoration. They should not be separated. Water resource issues must

continue to be addressed comprehensively and executed in a programmatic way, not piece-meal.

In light of the recent disasters, we have been asked if the LCA,

I think someone mentioned LCR, it is the Louisiana Coastal Area

plan that is now pending in WRDA, is still relevant. We think it

is more important than ever. We are probably going to have to do

a little project prioritization shifting, but the basics are there, and

what was needed before is absolutely needed now.

We also at the same time have to consider the conditions that

now exist out in the marsh. This is typical, any time you have a

major storm event, especially of this magnitude, we have to under-
17

stand and assess what is out there and we are going to have to

adapt our plans to follow. This is true all across our coast now, because basically every portion of our coast has been impacted.

Before you, you have a proposal that the State sent our delegation on September 8th in response to their request for recommendations on how to address the rebuilding. I want to just race

through a few of the key concepts that we think are important.

That we should implement the program through a partnership

between the State and the Corps through the Mississippi River

Commission, supported by a working group of State and Federal

agencies that includes scientists from the academic community,

both in the State and out of the State, ensuring that sound science

and engineering continues to lead the effort.

We have to accelerate construction of proposed hurricane protection projects to withstand category 5 storms, and we must repair

existing hurricane protection and upgrade them to do the same.

In spite of continuing subsidence of the landscape and changing

climate conditions, the engineering community assures us it can be

accomplished if these issues are taken into consideration. I look forward to hearing what the Dutch say on that issue.

We must implement the comprehensive suite of coastal restoration measures recommended in the Coast 2050 plan and we do realize that is a blueprint, and the LCA, which came about basically

because OMB asked us to scale back, to not address this comprehensively, and to scale back and deal with what was most immediately necessary, which we did. That is the LCA, which is what

we consider the near term first steps of implementation.

It is critical that we streamline the implementation process and

move immediately to design and construction. We can’t simply initiate traditional feasibility studies that take a minimum of about

five years on projects like these. By the Corps’ own admission, it

takes an average of 11 years from authorization to completion of

a project. If you add the 5 years of pre-authorization to that, it

would be 16 to 20 years before we have adequate hurricane protection from future storms. We simply don’t have 20 storm seasons to

wait.

We must have a sustained source of funding in the form of direct

sharing of OCS revenues, I know you have heard this before, to

protect and sustain our vital energy infrastructure to provide the

hurricane protection we need and to restore our wetlands. Our cost

estimates are about $32 billion to accomplish these things. It is a

very reasonable investment, compared to the hundreds of billions

of dollars in the losses caused by Katrina and Rita alone. Sharing

the OCS revenues would simply allow production supported from

Louisiana shores to be used to protected Louisiana shores, and we

feel would have the last impact on Congressional budgets and appropriations.

We know this is a long term effort, especially the coastal restoration piece of this. That type of sustained revenue would help us pay

our share.

Our predictions, tragically, now are reality. And time is definitely

not on our side. The way we address the crisis cannot be business

as usual. Surely the cost to the Nation of restoring our coastal

lands and providing real safety has now been justified.
18

I can’t emphasize enough how much the State of Louisiana values its longstanding partnership with the Corps of Engineers and

our other Federal agencies working with us to save the coast. We

recognize the role of this Committee in forging those partnerships,

and we appreciate it very, very much.

We are committed to spending Federal funding wisely on cost effective projects that produce real results and meet environmental

requirements. We are not asking for exemptions from NEPA or the

Clean Water Act. But we do need a commitment from the Congress

and the Administration that we all work much smarter and much,

much faster.

In closing, I would like to remind you that this is no longer theoretical. It is very real. And real people have lost their lives, and

hundreds of thousands more across the Gulf region have lost their

homes, their livelihoods, their family pets, their photographs, their

memories, if you will, everything. I sincerely ask you to keep the

human aspect before you as you make your decisions.

When all is said and done, this is not just about numbers on a

spreadsheet. It is about serving people just like you and me. It is

about rebuilding their dreams and their aspirations. It is about

Americans and their safety and their future. It is about the economic and human sustainability of our Country. Thank you.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Coffee. Certainly those

of us who have been down there will testify that it is the worst devastation that we have ever seen. On the other hand, I think we will

be amazed at how fast certain things come back, because we are

talking about people’s homes here. For instance, General Strock

mentioning the high school that they have gotten back open now

with 1,200 students already. Those types of reconstruction are

going to be very important. There are also areas that are going to

take years to recover.

But you are right, we do need some studies to make sure that

we act accordingly. But on the other hand, we don’t need years and

years and years of studies. We have to have action, too.

Dr. Walker.

Mr. WALKER. Good morning. I’m Bill Walker, and I serve at the

pleasure of Mississippi Governor Haley Barber as Executive Director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources.

Coastal Mississippi has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Our entire coastline found itself in the most damaging northeastern quadrant of this category 4 hurricane for 12 hours. While

property damage caused by this catastrophic event is evident to

anyone who has visited the area since the storm and seen first

hand the swath of destruction along U.S. Highway 90 and inland

for many blocks, the effect on coastal ecosystems and the renewable

natural resources that depend upon them are less evident to the

casual observer.

These resources, however, and Mississippi’s ability to harvest

and process them, have been devastated. Mississippi’s commercial

seafood industry produces an economic impact of about a billion

dollars a year and employs some 17,000 people. Our recreational

fishermen take some 1 million trips each year, with an economic

impact of nearly $200 million. These drivers of coastal Mississippi’s

economy are presently out of operation and they must be restored.
19

Mississippi’s oyster reefs produce some 400,000 sacks of oysters annually, with an economic impact of $100 million and an employment level of some 2,200 people. This industry has been brought

to its knees by Katrina and it must be restored.

Mississippi’s offshore barrier islands include Petit Bois, Horn,

Ship and Cat Islands, the islands comprising the Federal Gulf Islands National Seashore. This island chain is located some 12 miles

south of coastal Mississippi, and provides our natural first line of

defense against hurricanes and other tropical storm systems.

Unfortunately, these natural barriers have suffered from a series

of onslaughts, first from Hurricane Camille in 1969, then Hurricane Georges, then Hurricane Ivan, and finally Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina alone destroyed over 2,000 acres on these four barrier islands. Deer Island, Mississippi’s sole inshore barrier island, lost

nearly 25 percent of its total 430 acres to Katrina.

But as important as the actual acres lost, the elevation of the remaining island footprints has been reduced to near sea level

through almost complete destruction of all island dunes and at

least 50 percent of all island vegetation. These damaged barrier islands are now in imminent danger of further catastrophic erosion

without extensive and immediate beach, dune, vegetation and

marsh restoration.

Should another hurricane hit our region now, our barrier islands

would afford little if any protection to coastal Mississippi. These

protective capacities must be restored. Coastal marshes, as has

been mentioned by several of the speakers, also serve the Mississippi Gulf Coast by providing critical, essential habitat and also

buffer the effect of coastal storm surges. The overall footprint of

vegetative mainland coastal marshes remains similar to that before

Katrina, but the elevation of these marshes, and particularly the

upland areas immediately adjacent to them has been reduced significantly, making them and the landward areas which they protect

extremely vulnerable to future hurricanes.

Other resources, such as the Mississippi offshore artificial reef

system, submerged seagrass beds, our State’s spotted sea trout

hatchery, our emerging ecotourism industry, and numerous cultural and historical resources, have been drastically altered or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. These losses are described in my

submitted testimony and they must be restored.

Our restoration plan presents a two-phase approach. Phase 1 focuses on restoring Mississippi’s natural storm defenses, flood control capacities and our coastal habitat functions to pre-Katrina levels. Our Governor has said that if all we accomplish through all the

recovery efforts is to get back to where we were before Katrina, we

will have failed. Mississippi also includes a Phase 2 restoration effort, which will return our storm protection capacity, our flood control capacity and our ecosystem function to pre-Hurricane Camille

levels.

Both phases will also investigate non-natural defenses, such as

breakwater seawalls and other mechanical storm surge diffusion

approaches. The time frame for this plan is 15 to 20 years. We anticipate completing Phase 1 activities in the short term, one to five

or so years, with Phase 2 efforts beginning in the near term and

extending out some 20 years.
20

These restoration efforts will focus on improving flood control capacities by de-snagging and stream bed reconfiguring of coastal

riverine systems and their tributaries, increasing our natural hurricane protection capabilities through extensive restoration of our

offshore and nearshore islands and marshes, and the restoration of

our environmentally important and economically critical coastal

ecosystems and habitats.

We anticipate that with Federal assistance, coupled with State

support and private sector participation, we will be able to ultimately restore Mississippi’s capacity for hurricane protection, flood

control and ecological function to pre-Hurricane Camille levels.

Now, more than ever, we need to partner. I am proud of the partnerships that the State of Mississippi has forged with our Federal

friends at FEMA, with the Corps of Engineers and other agencies.

I agree with statements earlier that we have today the opportunity

to do things right, to provide a model, an example of how to respond in the face of crises like this. I am confident that if we partner together, we can be successful.

Thank you again for the opportunity to address you today.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Walker.

You may have heard in my opening statement where I said those

of us who went down there saw the worst damage of all in Mississippi. The damage in New Orleans is horrible, and many of

those homes will have to be destroyed. But most of those homes are

still there, and some of them are in pretty good shape, many of

them in good shape.

But we saw miles and miles and miles along the Mississippi

coast land where blocks and blocks, several blocks of homes were

just gone, totally. So it was really quite—it is more dramatic when

you see it in person instead of just on a little TV screen.

I am going to go for first questions to Ms. Johnson and let my

Ranking Member have the first questions here. Ms. Johnson.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much.

My first question is to Assistant Secretary Woodley and General

Strock. What steps have you taken to be sure that the construction

contracts for the rebuilding of the levees and any other hurricane

related work that you might contract on behalf of Federal agencies

is carried out by local contractors?

Mr. WOODLEY. Thank you for your question. I am going to ask

the Chief of Engineers to respond.

General STROCK. Yes, ma’am. Earlier you mentioned the challenge of the various tradeoffs we have and what we face in response to a disaster is the need to bring in, in a very big way, massive support to begin things like debris removal and temporary

housing. For that reason, we rely on advanced contract initiatives,

where we compete in advance. We try to create opportunities for

small businesses.

In the case of water, we have a small business firm delivering

water to supply to the affected people.

After the crisis begins to pass, we can then rely on a more focused effort to bring local and small businesses into the effort. We

are making that a very high priority.

In the interest of time, ma’am, I would like to submit all the statistics for the record. But I can assure you that it is a very, very
21

high priority for the Corps of Engineers. In addition to a focus on

direct prime contracting, which is most important to the local economy, we do use the provisions of the Stafford Act, which require

that the prime contractors give preference to local and small business. We require them to report on how they are doing.

I am very encouraged with the results we are getting from our

prime contractors in utilization of particularly local and small business as subcontractors. So we are working it very hard.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much.

Assistant Secretary Woodley, you state that the Administration

is working with Congress and the State of Louisiana to develop an

appropriate generic authorization for the Louisiana coastal area

ecosystem protection and restoration program. Who are you working with?

Mr. WOODLEY. We are working with the appropriate committees,

this Committee and the appropriate committee on the Senate side

to make sure that this type of authorization takes place within the

context of the Water Resource Development Act.

Ms. JOHNSON. Has the Administration given up on enacting the

water bill?

Mr. WOODLEY. No, indeed. We have not by any means given up

on enacting the water bill.

Ms. JOHNSON. Do you know anything about the progress of it in

the Senate?

Mr. WOODLEY. The progress in the Senate, the Senate is undertaking its constitutional responsibility in this regard.

[Laughter.]

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. Grumbles, would you like to comment on that?

Mr. GRUMBLES. On Assistant Secretary Woodley’s remark?

[Laughter.]

Ms. JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. GRUMBLES. I don’t know what the status of the legislation

on the Senate side is.

Ms. JOHNSON. We know that your agency will be very busy in

taking steps to help restore the flood protection to the pre-Katrina

levels. I am not sure that is even adequate, to the pre-Katrina levels. But for the work to enhance protection to category 5, some

have proposed waiving normal project development procedures, including waiving environmental laws. Do you support such call for

those waivers?

Mr. GRUMBLES. I think there are some waivers that are being

issued under the Clean Air Act. I think what is really required is

first and foremost the responsibility of recovering and rebuilding

communities and doing so consistent with the environmental laws.

Common sense also needs to play an important role in that, and

we need to take site by site, case by case instances into mind, provide flexibility but also accountability.

I know for instance, Congresswoman, with respect to some of the

wastewater treatment plants, there is a real need to demonstrate

discretion in terms of enforcement. You can’t require or expect a facility to be meeting certain important requirements under an environmental law if the facility isn’t even operable. So there is a need
22

for common sense and giving some time with milestones and accountability and tools to rebuild.

We are continuing to monitor and look for situations and to learn

more about whether or not there are any other provisions or greater flexibility that is needed under the environmental laws.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much. My time has expired.

Mr. DUNCAN. All right, thank you very much.

Mr. Gilchrest.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Woodley and General Strock, as we go through and take a

look at the kinds of things that need to be done to create the buffers, protect the infrastructure, it seems to me that a number of

changes have to take place in the traditional engineering of the levees, the canals, the sediment diversion and those kinds of things.

So do you see, in your plan, 2050, LCA, the Breaux Act, all those

things, do you see as you are going through to take a look at how

to restore the buffers, the wetlands, the vegetation, sediment diversion, all those things, do you see a need to close any canals? I am

asking in particular MRGO. Is there any status on that yet?

Mr. WOODLEY. Congressman, that type of decision would be one

for the future. But the program that we have proposed in the

chief’s report for the Louisiana coastal area restoration has entered

a very strong element of adaptive management that calls for the

study and a scientific—

Mr. GILCHREST. That canal is a possibility?

Mr. WOODLEY. I would certainly say it is not by any means off

the table.

Mr. GILCHREST. Ms. Coffee, is that one of your considerations?

Some of the canals that may have to be closed to prevent another

storm surge, is that in your thinking?

Ms. COFFEE. MRGO has always been in the mix. That is a very

important issue to a lot of people, especially today. Yes, we want

that canal environmentally restored, and we want the decision on

it made sooner than later.

Mr. GILCHREST. You would like to see that canal closed, so the

sediment would fill it in and it wouldn’t be used any more for

transportation purposes?

Ms. COFFEE. I don’t know if the sediment will ever fill it in. It

is huge. But yes, we would like to see it, if not closed, at least reduced to shallow draft or whatever. But I think that the modeling

is going to have to show us that.

Also, the modeling has to be improved. We have to balance, what

we are trying to do with MRGO is balance the needs of the Port

of New Orleans with the environmental needs. As I said, we would

like to get to the point that we can make that decision much sooner

rather than later.

Mr. GILCHREST. In your consideration of protecting the lower

Louisiana coast from a category 5 hurricane, do you envision, and

if you can include in your thinking that your barrier plan to protect

New Orleans, is there anywhere in your thinking that some communities may have to be relocated?

Ms. COFFEE. We have talked to year about this, and know that

eventually these decisions have to be made. I think the decisions

are, what has happened has possibly accelerated those types of de-
23

cisions. I want to stay very sensitive to the fact that these are peoples’ homes, these are peoples’ communities that they have lived in

for generations and fished and all the rest.

But I think it’s all a matter of protection. I think we have to look

at insurance, are they going to still be protected by insurance, is

FEMA going to offer flood insurance in certain ares, is the Congress willing to spend the money on certain pieces of that plan? I

think that is what is ultimately going to dictate the choices.

Mr. GILCHREST. Yes, ma’am, very difficult human issues.

Ms. COFFEE. Very.

Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Grumbles, we miss you up here. I’d like to

go back to 1995 and do the Clean Water Act all over again.

Is there an estimate as to the amount of municipal trash that

was generated as a result of Katrina based on the normal amount

of municipal trash that Louisiana has to deal with?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, I don’t have a specific number. I

would say a couple of things. One is that EPA, not my office, but

the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response has been spending a tremendous amount of time and attention on the debris issue

and the demolition waste, and working with the Army Corps,

which has a lead role in that area.

I think it is important that you are bringing up one of the greatest environmental challenges presenting in the Gulf, as the debris

and the waste management. I know EPA is looking for ways to not

only manage it appropriately and to help State and local authorities, but also to encourage recycling and re-use of uncontaminated

waste.

But I commit to provide you and the Committee with some numbers or more specific data on that point.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much. My time is up. I would

like to talk to Dr. Walker later about the differences between the

Mississippi coast in ecological and geologic terms and the Louisiana

coast and how the restoration projects might be different.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Pascrell.

Mr. PASCRELL. Yes, to the Assistant Secretary. I am concerned

about the plan to clean up the wreckage caused by Katrina, especially in New Orleans. Because 22 million tons of garbage and debris are sitting in the city as we speak. The Corps tell us that it

would take 3 and a half million large dump trucks to remove this

destruction from the city. I know that the Corps has awarded billions in contracts to remove the waste.

In the Sunday Times, this past Sunday Times, the Corps commented that this process would take seven months. Yet the State

argued it would take two years to clean up the debris. What seems

more accurate to you, and can rebuilding really begin until this

material is removed?

Mr. WOODLEY. I would have to ask the Chief to comment with

respect to the timetable on it. I can tell you that our endeavor is

to complete the work as quickly as possible, as soon as it can be

done in a way that is environmentally responsible and appropriate

and safe. The other part of your answer is that the ability to begin

reconstruction will have to be gradually extended in cooperation

with the State and local government on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, and we are very sensitive to their priorities.
24

Let me ask General Strock to comment on the timetable.

General STROCK. Yes, sir, we normally speak in terms of cubic

yards of debris. So I can’t comment on the tonnage you cited there.

But our estimate of the debris that the Corps of Engineers is

charged with removing is about 44 million cubic yards across the

coast. That is the four States involved here, and again, that is the

mission that has been handed to the Corps. That does not include

demolition debris, which we think might drive it up considerably,

perhaps as much as 70 million cubic yards, if we have that mission

in those same impacted counties and parishes.

Sir, to put it in context, Hurricane Andrew generated about 19

million cubic yards of debris. It took us 19 months to clear that

away. In this case, so far on day 50 here, after Katrina, we have

removed 13 million cubic yards. So we are well ahead of what

would normally be expected after a catastrophe of this magnitude.

Now, at that rate, we certainly couldn’t, there is not a linear relationship, because a lot of what we moved has been the easy stuff.

Now we have to get into some sediments and contaminated materials that Mr. Grumbles talked about. It is a matter of setting priorities and ensuring that we are working with the locals so they

get access to critical facilities and that sort of thing. Clearing rights

of way, waiting for the private citizens to return and move their

debris off their property onto the rights of way where we can pick

it up, negotiating conditions for going into private property, which

we must do after this circumstance.

Mr. PASCRELL. Is there a plan to do that, General?

General STROCK. To go on private property?

Mr. PASCRELL. Yes.

General STROCK. Yes, sir, there is. We have been given the authority to do that. It is very much like our roofing mission, we require a specific right of entry, signed by the landowner. It will be

done in a very careful and respectful manner to make sure that we

are not doing any unnecessary effort.

But clearly, as Mr. Duncan pointed out, in the coast of Mississippi, we cannot expect private landowners to be responsible for

removing debris from their yards when that debris has traveled a

quarter of a mile from the coast and it is their neighbor’s house.

So there clearly needs to be a little different way of thinking about

debris removal in this circumstance.

But sir, I am convinced we are going to get this done, expeditiously and in a very environmentally sensitive way. For example,

I flew over New Orleans yesterday and I saw a yard of thousands

of white good, refrigerators, washing machines and those sorts of

things, segregated and set aside for recycling. So we are very careful about how we do this.

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you very much. I would like to ask, if I

may, one question to the Assistant Administrator for Water and

Environmental Protection, Mr. Grumbles. Has the State and city

been working with you to assess environmentally dangerous materials in any of this debris, and have we analyzed the health impacts on people returning to their homes that are surrounded by

this waste?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congressman, I am going to give you a short answer and also commit to get back to you with more detail from
25

those who have been most involved in it, rather than me and the

Water office. I know that we have been spending a considerable

amount of time working with State and local officials and certainly

the Army Corps, when it comes to debris, to try to get a sense of

what it is, as well as to plan responsibly for how to manage it. Of

course, providing information and tools and necessary precautions

to people who are intent on getting back to their homes is also a

very important component for us, the whole habitability issue, providing appropriate information so that local officials and the appropriate authorities can inform citizens as to what they should be

doing is a high priority.

Mr. PASCRELL. Where is all this going, by the way? Where is all

this material going to? When we move it, there is a tremendous

amount of bacteria. We talked about this during the hurricane.

Where is the material going? Where are you putting it, that’s being

removed? General?

General STROCK. Sir, vegetative debris, we reduce and use for

mulch and try to recycle that as we can. White goods, as I mentioned, we try to recycle. We do try to minimize the use of landfills,

although that will be necessary in many cases. It depends on the

nature of the debris and if there are any hazards associated with

it.

But we are trying to do dual-use things. For example, in

Plaquemines Parish, we need burrow areas for levee construction.

So working with the local parish, we are doing the permitting to

convert those burrow areas into landfills and then refill them and

somewhat restore the topography in that way. Many different ways

to dispose of it.

Mr. PASCRELL. It seems to me that putting things in order before

we get into the great debate as to what New Orleans and what

folks living in New Orleans want New Orleans to look like, what

will be built and what won’t be built, we need to do everything we

can to assure that the health of these people, who, many of them

went back prematurely. We understand that. Many of us would

probably have the same urge if given the same set of circumstances.

But that’s critical. And I think the Congress needs to know what

the timetable of that is, working with the State, and to assure people that they are going back into an environment that is not going

make them sick, short term, long term. I think that is critical, don’t

you?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Most definitely. And I know from the Administrator’s perspective, and from the Deputy Administrator’s perspective, that is one of the highest priorities for the Agency and its mission, in carrying out our response to Katrina and Rita.

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you very much.

General STROCK. Sir, if I could, another example of things we are

trying to do is take highway debris, the concrete and so forth, the

rubble of these destroyed structures, and take them offshore and

build artificial reefs or perhaps barrier protection on the islands.

So we are making every effort to re-use this debris in a beneficial

way.

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you.

Mr. DUNCAN. We have some votes starting up.
26

Dr. Walker, you heard Ms. Coffee use a figure of $32 billion in

their request that they have made. You mentioned in your testimony that 60 percent of your shrimp industry was destroyed, that

you have an oyster industry worth $100 million a year and so

forth.

Has Mississippi come up with a figure comparable to what Ms.

Coffee just mentioned for your needs and your infrastructure restoration needs?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, Governor Barber has asked me to

present to him some information and some dollar requests for

coastal Mississippi. He has also asked the Mississippi Department

of Environmental Quality to provide information on their needs,

the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Issues and Parks and other

State agencies. As you may expect, those numbers have gone

through several revisions. They started relatively large and now

they are shrinking, as they should.

I hate to step out and speak for what the Governor is going to

do, but I will just simply say that it will be in the billions with a

B level. It may be in the tens of billions. It won’t be in the hundreds of billions, the request that comes from Mississippi.

Mr. DUNCAN. All right.

Ms. Coffee, it is my understanding that in the State of Louisiana

of course, we have already spent billions on some of the FEMA

emergency relief and people all over the Country have either contributed in cash or voluntary hours. I mentioned before that I don’t

think there is a police department, fire department, sheriff’s department that didn’t send people down there. So you have had billions of dollars worth of cash contributions or manhours that have

been contributed.

Is the State requesting that this $32 billion be 100 percent Federal? Because that is what I was told. You said in your testimony

when you first started out that you thought this should be a shared

obligation between the State and the local people and so forth.

What is your understanding?

Ms. COFFEE. I feel like there needs to be, we feel like there needs

to be an infusion on the front end, obviously, to get things started,

to get it jump started, especially when it comes to the hurricane

protection. That is an immediate need, really, that is an immediate

need.

With coastal restoration, we have always tied OCS revenue sharing with that, because we know that the coastal restoration piece,

while we need an initial boost to go ahead and jump start some of

these projects that we think are needed, in concert right here at

the beginning, we know that the coastal restoration piece is a long

term effort. If we have the OCS revenues we feel we rightly deserve, we can use those.

Our State has already passed, well, the constitutional amendment is coming up before the people, but we just passed overwhelmingly, in fact unanimously, in our last session the enabling

legislation that would allow any OCS revenues that come to us, the

first $600 million a year, which we thought would be on the outside, to be dedicated to coastal restoration and impacted infrastructure.
27

So our residents, we have been passing this type of legislation for

years now. We are very committed to using this for its purpose.

Mr. DUNCAN. I have other questions, but we have to break for

a vote here.

General Strock, let me just ask you very quickly, I understand

that there is some concern that several or many of these levees

have significant soil erosion underneath. What are you finding in

that regard? And secondly, feeding off of, or building off of Mr.

Pascrell’s question, have you given any consideration to, I understand that a lot of this debris is wood and plant waste and possibly

could be converted into ethanol or some other asset.

That is two different questions. Can you give us brief, quick answers to both of those?

General STROCK. Yes, sir, I can. Sir, as you know, we are in the

midst of a data collection, and specifically where the 17th Street

and London Avenue canals are concerned, we do think, the preliminary result of that is that the breaches in those levees were caused

by a soil shift or an embankment shift. So the soil moved there,

and we suspect that is because of foundation conditions. So as always, we have been concerned about the quality of soil and its ability to serve as part of the storm protection system.

Sir, on the recycling and ethanol, I was handed a paper when I

was down there recently on a process that can be used to do that.

It is quite expensive, a plant will take about $250 million to build

and about eight months to do it. Of course, then it becomes an enduring asset to the community. But that is a possibility for recycling or disposal of this woody debris. We are not actively considering that or proposing that we do that, but that is certainly a possibility.

Mr. DUNCAN. Let me apologize to the panel and the next panel,

but we have to go now and take a couple of votes. We will get back

as soon as we can. Thank you very much.

[Recess.]

Mr. BOUSTANY. [Presiding] I would ask the panel to please take

their seats so we can resume.

I have to apologize for Chairman Duncan’s absence. Something

came up, but I will be handling this hearing for the time being.

Thank you for your patience. We appreciate it. We had a little

interruption with the votes, and we will resume and hopefully have

no further interruptions as we move forward.

We are going to resume where we left off. I have several questions I would like to ask. First of all, Secretary Woodley, Committee leadership recently sent you a letter regarding the ability of

local cost sharing sponsors to pay for water resources projects following natural disasters such as what we have seen. Is the Corps

amenable to using the authority under Section 103(k) of the Water

Resources Development Act to allow non-Federal project sponsors

to defer their payments for their share of the project?

Mr. WOODLEY. Mr. Chairman, that is certainly among the options that we will be exploring going forward. I believe that a fair

case could be made that this is exactly the type of situation that

that authority was designed to be used in. So going forward, we

will explore that, and certainly as appropriate, as authorizations
28

are made, obviously the Committee will express its views to us as

to how that should proceed.

But I would fully support using that authority in any case in

which it was necessary and appropriate to ensure that infrastructure was created and the infrastructure necessary was constructed

and that it was found to be in the best interest of the Nation as

a whole.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I thank you for that answer.

General Strock, I was reviewing a lot of the old testimony from

this Subcommittee, and in particular with regard to the proposed

barrier plan that dates back to 1965, and my understanding was

after Congress authorized this plan, it was actually in the process

of being implemented and construction had begun in May of 1967.

Following that, I think it was January 1st, 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act was enacted and put into place.

Subsequently, you went back and did an environmental impact

statement, or the Corps did, and as a result, we had litigation. I

think it was in 1977, in December, the courts issued an injunction

halting that construction process. Obviously there is a plan in the

process of being implemented. Is that plan something that is reasonable to work with as a starting point, or—I know technology has

probably changed considerably. Do you think moving forward with

a barrier type of plan as proposed in some form with modern technology, could it meet muster with regard to Environmental Policy

Act?

General STROCK. Sir, I believe we would certainly need to consider the use of barriers. And I think in the next panel, you will

hear from the Rijkswaterstaat of the Netherlands some views on

the use of barriers and dikes. So it is certainly technically feasible

to do that. And the concept, of course, is to take the storm surge

off before it gets into Lake Pontchartrain. So we would certainly

consider that as a potential feature in any future improvements of

this system.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I thank you for that answer. Also, I know the

Secretary of Defense, as you mentioned, has basically asked the

Secretary of the Army to establish, get a National Academy of

Sciences panel involved to look at how the levees performed. My

understanding is that study is due in about eight months.

General STROCK. Yes, sir, that is correct. That is the request of

the Secretary of the Army to the National Academies.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Will that have an impact on your planning process as you move forward? I know right now, probably most of your

efforts are devoted to the reconstruction to pre-Katrina levels. But

I am curious about the timing of this study and how it will play

out with your future planning, depending on what we here in Congress do and so forth.

General STROCK. Sir, I think due to the complexity of the questions that need to be answered, that is a reasonable time. For example, just today I noted that it requires a 20 day waiting period

simply to announce that a panel is convening before they can

begin. That consumes over 20 percent of the time.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Sure.

General STROCK. So—not over 20 percent, that is wrong, but that

consumes a good bit of time. So I think it is a reasonable time.
29

What we will do is, as that panel proceeds, if they can reach

some interim conclusions, we will certainly take those and incorporate those into what we are doing to restore the existing system.

If we find out they conclude there is some flaw in a design or construction or something, then we would incorporate that into our interim efforts to restore protection.

Obviously if we go to a different level of protection or find we

need to do something significant, we use that.

We also are doing a parallel internal review of the same effort,

which will be peer-reviewed by ASCE and further reviewed by the

National Academies. As we reach conclusions there, we will incorporate that into our response to putting the system back together.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. One other question for you. Could

you shed a little light on the relationship between the Corps and

the local levee boards and how that has worked out, what deficiencies you see, what recommendations you may have as we move

forward?

General STROCK. Sir, I can’t comment on that personally. I think

that is a better question for the district and division people on the

ground. I can tell you, though, it is a symbiotic relationship. In

most cases, they are the local sponsors. In some cases the State

BOTD is the sponsor for some of our work.

But I can tell you that we work hand in glove with them. They

have a vested interest in getting it done right. And ultimately, we

turn it over to them for operations and maintenance, so they bear

that responsibility. And in conjunction with that, we conduct annual inspections to ensure that they are being maintained in an

adequate fashion.

Mr. BOUSTANY. And you are satisfied with that regime, whereby

they handle maintenance, routine maintenance and so forth, under

your watchful eye?

General STROCK. Yes, sir, I am.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Okay. That systems has worked well?

General STROCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Okay, thank you.

Ms. Coffee, welcome, good to see you. You mentioned relevance

of the LCA plan and mentioned that, yes, it is relevant and yet,

we need shifting priorities. I know in my review, I look at the September 8th letter, I am familiar with what we have in WRDA and

most of it is focused in the southeast part of the State. We have

needs in the southwest part of Louisiana.

I was interested in knowing whether you have any further comment or any updates as to what Governor Blanco and the Administration feel should be necessary.

Ms. COFFEE. What I meant is that the LCA itself is still very

much needed. What we have put forth in the LCA, my reference

was that the storm hasn’t changed, Katrina or Rita neither

changed those needs. Yes, we are very well aware that the western

part of the State is basically not included on an immediate level

in the LCA, and that was due to the scaling back which was required and asking us to deal with the most critical areas, the most

critical land loss.

But yes, and I am not saying for certain that the projects will

be prioritized, but we are looking at it right now to see, well,
30

should we possibly start this before that or whatever. The western

side of the State needs attention, definitely, especially after Rita.

It has, as you know, a different set of circumstances. But yes, we

need some work over there.

Mr. BOUSTANY. In reference to the southwestern part of the

State, and it probably applies more further beyond that, when you

look at the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, that embankment has

been considered spoil over the years by the Corps. My question is,

should we rethink this now and look at some sort of levee under

the jurisdiction of the Corps as we move forward. General Strock,

you might want to comment on that.

General STROCK. Sir, I think we should certainly consider that.

If as we analyze this with the State and this Committee and the

Administration has felt that a component of more protection would

be structural solutions of levees, then I think we should take advantage of those linear features that already exist and incorporate

them into a system. In fact, we have done some of that already in

some proposed projects in the area.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Okay. I appreciate the answer.

One final question for Ms. Coffee. The levee boards, do you have

an idea of what type of resources they have available at this time

as we look at mechanisms for funding?

Ms. COFFEE. I can’t specifically answer that to the resources. I

do know that the State itself has lost a third of its revenues.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Right, I am aware of that.

Ms. COFFEE. So when it comes to the levee protection, it is going

to be very difficult for us to match that. That is needed immediately, and we have no money.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I appreciate your answer.

I will now defer to the Ranking Member, Ms. Johnson. She has

been very patient here and probably has another round of questions.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much.

I know that this task is very daunting and certainly it is very

frustrating to determine how to get started. I do have some concerns, and I applaud the Mayor for attempting to get back a tax

base as quickly as he can. On the other hand, I am concerned that

the hurricane season is really still on. The levees are still out.

I wonder if there has been some coordinated planning on that or

some discussion, because it seems to me that the levees are going

to have to be constructed a little differently, at least according to

the October 8th New York Times article, that the levees that were

constructed were done in soil that was not really appropriate to

hold, that they needed to have been at least, the soil needed to be

changed or at least a lot deeper to hold them.

What kinds of discussions or coordination or planning do you

have in mind to be sure that when there is reconstruction, it is not

a waste of money and it will do what it has been put there to be

done, and that you coordinate with the Mayor, the local officials,

State officials to be sure that this movement is in conjunction with

the repair?

General STROCK. Ma’am, we are working very closely with Mayor

Nagin on his decisions on what parts of the city can be reoccupied
31

and when. It has a lot to do with EPA and the hazards that might

be faced by the citizens.

But it also has to do with the risks they face. There are two components of risk there. One, as you pointed out, is the condition of

the levee system. We are concerned about that. We established the

interim level prior to Rita, which was exceeded in the inner harbor

area. We thought we would get a surge of about six feet from Rita.

We got a surge of over eight feet, and we put protection into seven

above sea level.

So right now, we have restored the level of protection at the

breach sites to 10 feet of elevation, and we think we can certainly

handle a surge associated with a storm that passes away from New

Orleans. But again, they remain vulnerable to certainly any category of hurricane. So as they decide to reoccupy, obviously they

have to make sure they have good, solid evacuation plans in those

areas.

In terms of the areas that we had soil failure in, apparently we

are fortunate in that in both of those canals we have bridges that

transit the canals between the breach site and the lake. As we did

prior to Rita, we can close those off with sheet pile, and that will

protect those areas. That is good interim protection. So that is

what we intend to do, until we can understand what needs to be

done on a larger scale within those levees.

The other hazard the city faces is interior drainage. The big

pump systems in New Orleans are not meant to fight floods, but

to drain precipitation. Those are now back up to about 90 percent

capacity, but we are well aware of those stations that are challenged, like the one in the Ninth Ward. We have auxiliary pumps

and that sort of thing standing by.

But the Mayor is very well aware of what various levels of rainfall would result in terms of further flooding from precipitation. So

we are working very closely with him to make sure that they make

informed decisions on when to reoccupy.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you.

Mr. Grumbles, I know that the debris removal has not yet included the crud or whatever the dried stuff is now, and there is

quite a bit of it. Has there been any testing on the content? Has

there been decision as to what you do after you scrape it out?

Mr. GRUMBLES. Congresswoman, I know that I am going to have

to get back to you with greater detail on this, because I haven’t

been the one primarily involved in the sediment. The Solid Waste

and Emergency Response office has. I do know that we have done

some testing of sediments.

The Agency has been monitoring for that, because just as you

say, as the unwatering in the City of New Orleans has occurred,

through the good efforts of a lot of folks, including the Corps, what

you are left with is the residuals that may have greater health

risks. That is why we have been focused on that as well in terms

of the monitoring, to help inform decision makers on how best to

manage that sediment.

But I am going to need to get back to you with more specifics

on what we have found and the details of it.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much.
32

Mr. BOUSTANY. The Chair is now pleased to recognize the Subcommittee Chairman, Mr. Shuster. He is Chairman of the Public

Buildings, Economic—it is a long one—Economic Development and

Emergency Management.

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you.

Again, welcome to all of you. Most of you, I guess the three on

that side have been here many times. Welcome to you folks.

Thanks for traveling from Mississippi and New Orleans.

The question I have first is for General Strock. We had a quick

conversation, I think when we were out in the hall here about

building up the levees and you conveyed to me that time, when you

go up and make them higher, you also have to go wider. I wondered, do you have an idea at this time, have you been looking at

design, if we go up and build the levees higher, how much ground

will we take up? How many homes will be displaced if we do that?

General STROCK. Sir, I don’t know if have specifics on that. That

information may be available in the New Orleans district. That is

certainly one of the considerations that we take as we plan how to

do the flood protection. In fact, in many areas in metropolitan New

Orleans, the decision was, there was a finite element of ground we

were going to take up. For that reason, we came up with a combination of levees with a floodwall on top. That reduces the footprint.

The most effective form of flood protection is a levee.

Mr. SHUSTER. Which is there today, is what you are saying?

General STROCK. That is what is there today, and that is where

we had the breaches in the 17th Street and London Avenue Canal.

Mr. SHUSTER. So it would be significantly wider if we go up to

the category 5?

General STROCK. Yes, sir. Typically if you go up a foot of elevation, it requires about six feet of footprint to go up, based on our

normal designs for levees.

Mr. SHUSTER. And how high would they have to go to resist or

protect against category 5?

General STROCK. Sir, I am not sure about the storm surge associated with category 5. It is designed now to an 11.5 storm surge,

and hence the walls are anywhere from 15 to 17 feet high, with a

factor of safety and wave action.

I have heard the figure of 30 foot levees for category 5, but that

depends on where you put them, and a lot of conditions and variables. But it is that sort of level of magnitude you are talking

about, 25 to 30 foot levees really would take a category 5 storm

surge.

Mr. SHUSTER. And what happened here was not the water coming in off the ocean, well, it was coming into Lake Pontchartrain,

correct, and it was sort of the backwash out was what topped it?

General STROCK. Sir, we are still looking at that. The storm

surge was actually caused by the wind and the change in barometric pressure associated with the storm. Perhaps Dr. Hoogland

can talk more about that than I can.

The storm surge was really the cause of this, because the surge

went up into Lake Pontchartrain, we have modeled this and we

think we know what happened. We are still trying to gather the

data.
33

One of the problems is that all the sensors were destroyed in the

storm, so we really don’t know exactly what happened. But there

was clearly a very significant storm surge in Pontchartrain, and

the challenge there is that once it gets into the lake, because of the

narrow outlets, it stays there and it is rather like draining a bathtub with a straw, it just takes time to go down. So you had this

elevated level of water, you had the dynamics of four hours of constant pounding and between those forces we had a breach in the

levee and we couldn’t contain it because the lake levels remained

high.

Mr. SHUSTER. And if you build it to withstand a category 5 hurricane, you still can’t put a guarantee that it could be a 5 plus, you

are never certain, I guess you could build 100 foot high levees, you

are not going to be able to guarantee that even at a 30 foot high

wall that the surge may even go higher than that?

General STROCK. Sir, there is risk involved. We talk in terms of

levels of protection in terms of years of events, 100 year, 200 year

events. It is my understanding that the Dutch have gone to a 1 in

10,000 year event that they are protecting against. So those are

pretty good odds.

I think it is technically feasible, but again, you have a lot of social things, you are talking about how much land it takes, how

much cost it is and so forth. That is why I think we would have

to consider something like the barriers, which would take the

storm surge off, that would reduce the need for higher levees and

gates and that sort of thing in the city.

Mr. SHUSTER. Looking at the City of New Orleans, it is a little

above sea level in some places, but I think I have read as low as

12 feet below sea level, that adds to the problem, is that correct?

In your view, are there parts that are below sea level that you

would look at and say, well, maybe this isn’t the best place to rebuild?

General STROCK. Sir, what that adds to, I think, the frequency

of the storm is what it is. But the impact of the storm is magnified

by where you sit in the city. So that is the real challenge there.

Land use and zoning and that sort of thing is up to the local authorities on whether and how to reoccupy. Of course, that will be

influenced by things like flood plain mapping and whether FEMA

is willing to insure, and whether the industry is willing to insure

people who go into that kind of situation.

So it is not for us to say. What we will do then is create the technical, economic and environmental solutions, should they choose to

operate in those areas in a way that protects them.

Mr. SHUSTER. When those levees were built, I have either read

or was told the Corps wanted to put flood gates on or surge gates,

and the locals decided at that point they didn’t want to do that. Is

that accurate?

General STROCK. Sir, it is a long and evolutionary process that

started with the barricades as an outer barrier to stop it. Once that

was ruled out, our suggestion was that flood gates across the canals would be appropriate, that we could close in an event. But the

challenge with that is that when you close those gates, typically a

hurricane has water as well. As they pump water out of the city
34

into those canals, then the water level, the water has nowhere to

go.

So they were concerned about closing off those canals that could

not be operated during hurricanes. Then we evolved to a solution

of what we call parallel protection, that is armoring the sides of

those canals to withstand the forces. We thought we had done that,

and we will find out soon whether we did or not.

Mr. SHUSTER. Also, I saw an estimate of $5 billion, does that

sound right, to build the levees up to 30 feet or to withstand a category 5?

General STROCK. Sir, I can’t comment on the specifics of how we

do that. The reconnaissance study that was completed in 2002 suggested that it is probably a $3 billion to $3.5 billion job to protect

the parishes in New Orleans, the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane

Protection Study, to raise it to a category 5 level.

I think we have gone back and looked at that a bit now, and with

some enhancements we think we would like to put in there if we

get the opportunity, it may go higher than that. It is likely to go

higher than that.

Mr. SHUSTER. When you do an estimate, do you just basically do

it on what it costs to construct it, or do you factor in things like

environmental challenges, you might have court challenges if you

are going to move people and there are going to be people upset?

General STROCK. Sir, we don’t factor in the potential for litigation. We assume we are going to do things right that will protect

us from that.

But we certainly do, as we look at this, we look at national economic benefits, that is cost benefit ratio, what is being protected

versus the cost of the protection. We look at regional economic development benefits, at least consider those. We look at environmental impacts and benefits. And then there other things, social

and environmental justice and those kinds of things that we consider.

But the driver is the national economic development benefit, the

cost benefit ratio, the value of the property being protected versus

the cost to do that.

Mr. SHUSTER. And I heard six to one, does that sound right?

General STROCK. Six to one is a typical one. I believe that is the

current cost benefit ratio of a category 5. I am not certain on that,

but I think that is about right, yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. Okay. Are there other things you can do besides

building the levees up, if a decision is made not to build them to

withstand a category 5, can you move houses out of the way and

do retention ponds or storm drain runoff type facilities, or even a

canal? Does that make sense?

General STROCK. Those sorts of things I think make a lot of

sense in dealing with the post-event. For example, I think clearly

the city needs to give some thought into bringing some of their

electrical stations and pumping stations up above a flood level, because they are all down below the flood level now, because they

were meant for interior drainage. So the city needs to consider

those things, so they can deal with it after the fact.

Most of the newer pump stations in the city are up along the

levee walls on the lake front and on the river front. The older
35

pump stations, which represent a tremendous investment in capital, are in the middle of the city. So I think they certainly need

to look at measures like that to make the pumping stations less

vulnerable to flooding, should it occur.

Again, I go back, I think, in terms of reducing the likelihood of

a flood. You can either build higher and stronger around the city

or you can build perhaps a layering of protection with perhaps

something tied to barriers and that sort of thing to reduce the

storm surge that would require lesser effort around the populated

areas.

Mr. SHUSTER. So that is an option to do, if they decide not to go

up?

General STROCK. Yes, sir, it is.

Mr. SHUSTER. You can do those types of things?

General STROCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHUSTER. I see my time has expired. So thank you very

much, I appreciate it.

General STROCK. Thank you, Mr. Shuster.

Mr. BOUSTANY. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Boozman from Arkansas for five minutes.

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you very much. We appreciate you all

being here.

As I go around my district, the people of Arkansas want to help

and feel like we have a commitment. But I think there is great concern that this money be spent in an appropriate way. So very

quickly, I’m interested in your input, and I have worked with all

of you very closely, I have all the respect in the world. But this

thing has to be done very transparently. In order to satisfy our citizens’ concerns, to satisfy this Committee’s concerns, and I think

Congress’ concern on both sides, I would like for you to reassure

us publicly that you are going to make every effort to do that.

Then too, if you have any comments about perhaps any additional mechanisms that we need to put in place to assure Congress

and to assure the public. Certainly we are going to have oversight,

but to make this thing as transparent a process as it can be, and

to ensure that the money that we allocate, especially in this time

with so much going on, is spent as it should be spent.

General STROCK. Sir, I will start and then turn it over to the Secretary. First of all, in terms of transparency, there are many aspects of this. One of those is the forensic work we are doing right

now to figure out what actually occurred. That must be absolutely

transparent and very inclusive to make sure we have all points of

view so that we really do understand what happened, so that we

can build necessary enhancements back into the system.

We have ownership of that, so we are very interested in making

sure that is an absolutely transparent process. I do know that

there are some people who may be skeptical about our ability to

investigate and analyze our own work. So I will turn it over to the

Secretary, because in recognition of that, there is an effort that is

above the Corps of Engineers in which we nest and contribute, but

is overseen by others. I am not sure if that is the transparency you

are talking about, but it is certainly one that is important to us.

Mr. WOODLEY. Yes, sir, Congressman, we have two aspects, as

you mentioned, the first being the transparency and the public as-
36

surance necessary that we have gotten to the bottom of the

breaches, the causes, and we understand what happened and why

it happened with Hurricane Katrina and the way these works that

were in place on August 28th functioned.

We are going to first of all operate a transparent process to determine that, then we are going to overlay on that another transparent process in which we get independent review from the National Academy of Sciences, the world’s most respected independent

scientific review body that we have at our disposal. So I have great

confidence that at the end of that process, you and the Committee

and the Congress and the American people and the Administration

will all have the high level of confidence that we have vetted the

process completely and we have a thorough understanding of what

took place.

The second piece is the question of what is, what plans are going

go be made and what plans are going to be laid going forward as

we look to new dispensations on hurricane and storm protection for

this region. Of course, you know that the Corps of Engineers process, the feasibility study process and the NEPA process that we go

through for all of our projects is one of the most open processes in

Government.

So we will certainly commit to using that process going forward

and have all the reports and recommendations that are submitted

and come forward after full public review, after review in the

Chief’s office and review in my office, and then submittal to the

Committee, that everything that goes into our decision making

process will be fully available to everyone. The same thing applies,

I am sure, to the State and municipal authorities that are involved

in these decision making processes.

Mr. BOOZMAN. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I would ask the two gentlemen if they have any

additional questions. We do have some time, if you would like. No?

Okay.

That being the case, I want to thank this distinguished panel for

being with us. This will conclude the questioning of the first panel,

and we will start up with our second panel. Thank you very much,

to all of you.

I would like to welcome the second panel to this hearing. We

have a very distinguished panel here with us today. We have Dr.

Robert Dalrymple, on behalf of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is a professor of civil engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

We also have Dr. Denise Reed, Professor of the Department of

Geology and Geophysics at the University of New Orleans in New

Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome. I hope your home is okay.

We have Mr. Raymond Butler, Executive Director of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, from Friendswood, Texas. Dr. Roy A.

Dokka, Professor of Engineering, Director of the Louisiana Spatial

Reference Center and Center for GeoInformatics at Louisiana State

University in Baton Rouge. Mr. Jan Hoogland, Director of the

Rijkswaterstaat in the Netherlands, accompanied by Mr. Dale Morris with the Dutch Embassy.

Welcome to all of you. We will start with the testimony from Dr.

Dalrymple.
37

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT A. DALRYMPLE, PH.D., P.E., WILLARD

AND LILLIAN HACKERMAN PROFESSOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY; DENISE J. REED,

PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS,

UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS; RAYMOND BUTLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GULF INTRACOASTAL CANAL ASSOCIATION; ROY K. DOKKA, FRUEHAN ENDOWED PROFESSOR OF

ENGINEERING, DIRECTOR, LOUISIANA SPATIAL REFERENCE

CENTER AND CENTER FOR GEOINFORMATICS, LOUISIANA

STATE UNIVERSITY; JAN R. HOOGLAND, DIRECTOR,

RIJKSWATERSTAAT, ACCOMPANIED BY: DALE MORRIS

Mr. DALRYMPLE. Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, my name is Robert Dalrymple, and I am pleased to appear on

behalf of the American Society of Civil Engineers as you examine

hurricane and flood protection and water resource planning for a

rebuilt Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

We commend you on taking the time to study the integration of

hurricane, storm and flood protection, navigation and coastal ecosystem restoration while meeting local objectives for rebuilding

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. My career as an educator and engineer has been dedicated to coastal engineering, which is a field

that deals with the complexities of engineering at the coastline,

where waves and storms create large forces on structures, high

water levels and coastal erosion.

The driving focus of coastal engineering research has been to develop an ability to predict the behavior of the shoreline over a short

time scale, such as the duration of a major storm, to longer time

scales, such as the response of a shoreline over 100 years to human

intervention. We have come a long way toward that goal, but much

work remains to be done.

The ASCE’s paramount concern is for the safety, health and welfare of the public. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity to

learn from the tragedy of New Orleans to prevent future loss of life

and property.

After the storm, the American Society of Civil Engineers assembled several teams of experts to examine the failures of the New

Orleans levee system, as well as to examine the shoreline damage

along the Alabama and Mississippi coastline. I led a team of four

coastal engineering experts, including two visitors from the Netherlands and Japan to look at the walls in New Orleans. Our New Orleans team of coastal engineers was joined by another ASCE team

of geotechnical engineers and a team from the University of California at Berkeley. Our three teams were joined there by a team

of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the Engineering Research

and Development Center in Vicksburg, which provided considerable

insight and logistic support.

We gathered information about the failure of the levees, including that data that would be lost during the process of levee repair

and the passage of time. I have some overhead information.

The evidence that we looked for was evidence that was ephemeral, that would be lost in the process of levee repair, such evidence

as high water lines, wave overtopping, and the evidence of foundation movement and failure. Based on the evidence that we gathered

during that week, our joint teams knows in principle how the lev-
38

ees in New Orleans failed. The exact details, however, await additional analysis.

And as noted by the first panel, there is an interagency performance evaluation task force with NRC and the ASCE being put together.

In terms of development along the Nation’s shoreline, for either

commercial or residential purposes, it should be done in a sound

manner. For residences, simple measures such as elevating buildings along the predicted coastal storm surges and adding hurricane

clips to roofs are measures that have reduced the loss of life and

property in hurricane-prone regions. Beach nourishment has proven to be effective for many coastal communities.

Since I do have the slides here, this is overtopping evidence on

the industrial canal, just south of the big breach. You can see the

barge that went through the wall. There were two breaches, one

with the barge and one without. But you do see the trench at the

foot of the wall. This is the 17th Street Canal, there is no evidence

of overtopping here. I am standing in the breach area.

This is evidence of soil translation at the 17th Street Canal. You

can see that there is a channeling fence in the middle of the picture

that has been moved about 30 feet laterally by the walls being

pushed landward.

Levees can provide protection from high water lines due to storm

surge. However, they need to be designed to resist overtopping and

to be well anchored. Restricting development in fragile environmental areas is another important tool. These and other coastal

management practices should be provided to prevent unsafe coastal

construction and the losses of beaches and wetlands that protect

the upland.

We need to especially protect our Nation’s wetlands, which are

disappearing at an alarming rate. These vital natural areas, important for reducing the impact of storms by providing a buffer area,

are also important biological assets.

The Mississippi River levee system, constructed to contain the

river from flooding surrounding areas, is one of the several reasons

for the rapid loss of land on the Louisiana shoreline, as it stops the

natural sedimentation that flooding brings. Other reasons include

oil and gas activity in the coastal area, naturally occurring subsidence and the rise in sea level.

The key to successfully restoring a sustainable ecosystem in the

Louisiana coastal wetlands is to manage and use the natural forces

that created the coastal area. We need to create and sustain wetlands and barrier islands by accumulating sediment and organic

matter.

Moreover, we need to establish integrated watershed planning

for the lower Mississippi River and the Mississippi Delta as a basis

for any flood protection or coastal restoration program. This would

require the inclusion of navigation, flood protection, hurricane protection and ecosystem restoration as integral parts of any infrastructure planning.

To better cope with natural disasters, we need to better understand them. Federal funding for research into hurricane waves and

surge, tsunamis, coastal erosion and other costal natural disasters

is very low, as documented in the 1999 National Research Council
39

report by the Marine Board. The Nation needs a sustained effort

to improve the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of hurricane infrastructure systems that will mitigate the

effects of natural hazards.

The Nation’s flood protection infrastructure, as well as its inland

waterway system, is in the same precarious state as much of the

other civil infrastructure of the Country. The American Society of

Civil Engineers, with its report card for America’s infrastructure,

has graded our navigable waterways a D minus this year, down

from a D plus in the year 2001. Dams were given a grade of D.

We need as a Nation to attend to these essential, life-protecting

structures.

The ASCE believes that Congress should enact a national levee

inspection and safety program that should be modeled on the successful national dam safety program to ensure that our levees are

safe and effective.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee.

That concludes my statement.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Dr. Dalrymple.

Next we will go to Dr. Reed.

Ms. REED. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I am here today to discuss with you the interactions among ecosystem restoration, flood protection and other future water resources planning efforts for the area recently devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now more than ever, we need those things

to work together.

I am going to emphasize just three points here this morning.

First, I want to address how ecosystem restoration can assist with

flood protection. Ecosystem restoration projects, particularly those

in the future, that are placed and designed specifically to provide

flood protection to adjacent communities, will only be effective in

achieving that if they are robust and themselves stand up to storm

damage.

Observations of coastal marshes east of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina show thankfully that most of the coastal wetlands

came through unscathed and likely received an important input of

sediment which will help keep them up above sea level rise in subsidence. I will come back to that issue in a moment.

However, marshes east of the city with more organic soils were

physically torn apart by the storm surge and the waves. Importantly, though, some marshes close to the city which have been receiving river sediment as part of an existing restoration project remained intact, and six weeks after the storm, new growth of vegetation is already taking place.

Healing some of the damaged marshes will likely occur quickly

if fresh water and nutrients from the river can be gotten into those

areas. But firm marsh soils are going to be essential if these or any

other restored marshes are going to withstand future storms and

continue to contribute to flood protection.

Secondly, I want to address the effect of some flood protection

measures on the coastal ecosystem. The barrier plan for Lake Pontchartrain and some other flood protection measures currently being

considered for south Louisiana will change the dynamics of the
40

coastal ecosystem by altering water flows, even when there is no

storm threat.

When the barrier plan was considered several years ago, it seems

that salinity was the major concern. Some now suggest that that

concern could be addressed by designing the structure appropriately to take that factor into account.

However, our 21st century understanding of how costal ecosystems work demands that we maintain the dynamic exchanges

between the lakes and the bays and the marshes. This concept was

fundamental to the widely accepted Coast 2050 plan for Louisiana

restoration. To keep an ecosystem inside a barrier viable, let alone

healthy, we must not limit these exchanges except during storms.

The planned Morganza to the Gulf hurricane protection project

in Louisiana applies this principles. Future flood protection works

that encompass coastal wetlands within their boundary can and

should be similarly synergistic with the environment.

Lastly, I would like to address the issue of sustainability in the

face of subsidence and sea level rise. The coastal wetlands of the

northern Gulf Coast can survive sea level rise if we give them a

fighting chance. Recent studies have measured high subsidence

rates along roads and highways in the region. But thus far, these

measurements have not been made in the coastal marshes. Coastal

marshes are very resilient to rising sea level. They have the ability

to build up soils in ways that roads and highways and levee crests

that we build simply don’t. That so many marshes still remain in

coastal Louisiana despite these high rates of subsidence that we

have measured in the late 20th century, that in itself is testament

to their ability to survive, if conditions are favorable, if we give

them a fighting chance.

Predictions of subsidence and sea level rise must be a really important part of our planning for restoration, for flood protection

and for community rebuilding. But in and of themselves they do

not mean that we should abandon this highly productive coastal

ecosystem.

That concludes my remarks for the moment, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you very much, Dr. Reed.

Mr. Butler, you are now recognized.

Mr. BUTLER. Thank you, sir.

Good afternoon. My name is Raymond Butler. I am the Executive

Director of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association in Houston,

Texas.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I would like to thank

you for giving the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, GICA, this

opportunity to provide our input into the vital questions of how

Gulf Coast inland waters navigation might be affected by future

hurricane protection options and how it has been affected by the

recent storms.

Before I answer those questions, I would like to tell you a little

bit more about our association. In August, GICA celebrated its

100th anniversary. Our 200 plus members are virtually a who’s

who of barge and towboat operators, cargo carriers, shippers, port

authorities and waterways service organizations from Florida to

Texas. Because of the local, regional and national significance of
41

the canal, GICA continues to exist as an organization advocating

for proper stewardship of this vital resource.

As I am confident the Committee is already aware, barges move

cargo more efficiently, cleanly, cheaply than any other competing

surface mode of transportation. To give an example, a single tow

pushing two tank barges, which is very common on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway these days, can move 60,000 barrels of product.

That same product would require 80 railroad tank cars or 300 large

tank trucks to move on our highways and rail systems.

The products of the refineries, chemical plants along the Gulf

Coast, grain, steel, coal, cement, agra-goods and other commodities

that move by barge are vital to every American. If you eat, drive

a car, turn on a light or use products containing plastic, I would

contend you depend on the efficient operation of this waterway.

The manufacturing facilities along the canal provide vital, highpaying jobs that sustain the Gulf Coast economy.

Overall, the GIWW fared very well in this last series of hurricanes that have battered the Gulf Coast. However, there are reasons for concern, lessons to be learned and actions that we need to

take to ensure the future reliability of the waterways.

I have a vessel operations background. I was privileged to have

worked with the Coast Guard command center and the Corps of

Engineers very intimately in carrying out a coordinated, joint industry agency response to Hurricanes Ivan, Dennis, Katrina and

Rita. I would like to share some of what I learned during some of

those experiences with you today.

First, we must continue and strengthen the partnership between

industry, the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard, which in

my view was very critical to the rapid restoration of navigation

along the entire GIWW, within six days after Hurricane Katrina

and within four days after Rita. Secondly, we must focus on the

critical importance of communications, recognizing the need to colocate key industry and Government response personnel to the

same location and provide those key personnel with a common operating picture of what is actually happening during our preparation and restoration efforts on a real-time basis.

Third, we must identify and pursue integrated response solutions

that address the needs of navigation, flood control and the environment and allow us to simultaneously address all of these needs

while assuring that the vital goods essential to our Nation’s economy keep moving on the waterways.

Fourth, we must pursue wise planning mechanisms that avoid,

wherever possible, placing residential and retail development in

conflict with crucial navigation systems, while at the same time

being sensitive to our environmental stewardship responsibilities.

Finally, we must stop under-investing in our Nation’s inland waterway system and ensure on both the capital and operations and

maintenance sides of the equation that this Nation will continue to

have a world class inland waterway system.

Mr. Chairman, although I am not an expert on structural protection from hurricanes, I can tell you that we need to examine the

damage our locks suffered as a result of the storms and ensure we

protect these vital structures as best we can. We need adequate
42

spare parts, ready to deliver and fix whatever damage occurs right

away.

I can tell you that efficient, low cost inland waterway transportation is vital to serving American consumers and keeping our

coastal industries competitive in a global marketplace. Where

structural remedies are required to assist in flood damage reduction, they must not impair the dependable, reliable and efficient

navigation on which we all depend.

In closing, I would like to say that after spending many days

with our Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers folks on a very personal level during our response to these devastating storms, I am

in awe of the job that these folks did. In my view, one of the most

important parts of that response was the spirit of partnership with

industry that both of these agencies embraced during that process.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and testify

today.

Mr. BOUSTANY. We thank you, Mr. Butler.

We will now recognize Dr. Dokka.

Mr. DOKKA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the

Committee for inviting me today, and I hope that my testimony

will be of value to you.

You are looking for answers today, permit me to help you to try

to understand a little bit better what the problem is. Ladies and

gentlemen, a silent disaster of massive proportions is slowly drowning the Gulf Coast and making communities and critical infrastructure ever more vulnerable to hurricanes. Today, waters of the Gulf

of Mexico are inundating the land, due to the slow rise of the

world’s oceans and more importantly, due to the rapid sinking of

the land.

This sinking, or subsidence, is the downward movement of the

land relative to a point of reference. The entire coast and adjoining

areas from Mobile to the Mexican border is sinking. Louisiana’s

coast has sunk from between two and four feet since 1950. Subsidence occurs largely by natural processes, augmented locally by

human activities. The natural processes are unrelenting and

unstoppable, in contrast to human-induced components.

My written testimony outlines the causes, and I will use the remaining time to focus instead on how subsidence will directly impact immediate reconstruction efforts and future mitigation planning along the Gulf Coast.

Understanding subsidence today requires accurate measurement

of what is happening today. Because sinking will continue into the

future, it is critical for planning. My comments draw heavily from

a report written Mr. Kurt Shinkle and myself and issued in 2004

by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the

Department of Commerce. This report, NOAA Technical Report 50,

documents land movements that have occurred over the past 50

years, using the most precise and reliable data available.

Here are a few of the practical implications of modern subsidence. The vertical control system surveyors use to determine elevation, as well as the plan and build infrastructure, has been corrupted by subsidence. There are only 86 benchmarks in the entire

State of Louisiana that are reliable today. A week ago it was zero.
43

Subsidence will render most of these reference points useless within a year or two.

Mississippi and south Texas have similar problems. Bad vertical

control has bad consequences. The Corps of Engineers cannot at

present build new or augment existing hurricane protection levees

to proper elevations. The levees are as much as two feet lower than

they were designed in some areas of south Louisiana. Subsidence

has moved them over time.

NOAA National Hurricane Center cannot at present produce accurate storm surge models of the Gulf Coast, because land elevation inputs are incorrect. FEMA cannot make accurate flood insurance rate maps. Areas mapped as outside the flood zone may actually be in the flood zone.

State and Federal highways are being built below their desired

design heights. They may not be able to serve as escape routes during storms and will likely degrade more quickly due to the elements. Consumers cannot get accurate elevations on home slabs for

insurance purposes.

So what is the future? Well, because subsidence is unrelenting,

it means increasing vulnerability to storm surge over time. If hurricanes of the magnitude of Katrina and Rita return 25 years from

now, the area of effect and destruction will be much greater unless

we prepare.

Much of coastal Louisiana sits between three feet and sea level,

and by the end of this century, most areas will be at or below sea

level. Modern subsidence has occurred at substantially higher rates

and over larger areas than supposed by Federal and State agencies

tasked to study this problem. Subsidence is observed far beyond

the wetlands of the Mississippi River delta. In your district, sir,

your area sunk something like five feet in the last several years.

The data do not support the widely held belief that the disease

killing the coast can be addressed by just the wetlands-centric solutions. The real enemy is the Gulf of Mexico. Current plans to save

the coast will likely improve the ecology, a laudable goal that

stands on its own merits. But these efforts cannot build elevation

in New Orleans, Houma or any places where people live and work

in south Louisiana. Without elevation, our only hope is through the

enhancement of our levee defenses. The reality is that without

them, we must surrender the coast and retreat.

Let me close by focusing on two action items. The first deals with

the design of a comprehensive levee system that can afford adequate protection today and over the design life of this system. To

be viable, the design must account for our changing landscape, especially future subsidence. Furthermore, new protection walls will

be needed to be built in southwest Louisiana, along the coast west

of Morgan City to the Sabine River. There is none today.

Similarly effective designs need to be developed along the eastern

edge of Lake Pontchartrain for storm surges that might arise from

the north.

The second critical step is the rapid re-establishment of accurate

vertical control in the region. If engineers say they need to built

a category 5 flood protection wall to plus 23 feet, then the builders

will have to be able to figure out where plus 20 feet is in the field.

That is not possible today.
44

Congress needs to support acceleration of the national height

modernization program currently underway by NOAA National

Geodetic Survey. Builders and planners need accurate elevations

now if we are to prevent future massive repeat mitigation.

Thank you for your attention. I will be happy to answer any

questions afterwards.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you very much, Dr. Dokka.

Mr. Hoogland, you are welcome to give your testimony now.

Mr. HOOGLAND. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the

Committee, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honor for me to be

here to testify on the subject of flood protection in our country.

Let me tell you something about myself. I spent my entre career

within the Netherlands Ministry of Public Works and Water Management, in a department called Rijkswaterstaat. That is comparable with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

From 1981 until 1997, I was in charge of policy making of flood

protection in my country. Mr. Chairman, I have submitted the formal written testimony called Flood Defense in the Netherlands:

Lessons Learned from Dutch History, and I respectfully request

that this be inserted in the records of your Committee.

First of all, I need to point out that all the water situation in the

Netherlands is quite different from that in the United States. Almost 60 percent of our country is threatened by water, either by

storm surges and/or by floods due to high discharges of rivers. Cities, such as Rotterdam, our main harbor and the world’s second

largest port, and Amsterdam, our capital, and our largest international airport are below sea level. We earn 70 percent of our

gross national product and attract huge amounts of foreign investment in these flood-prone areas.

On top of that, millions of people live below sea level. Yet they

feel safe and secure.

Hundreds of years ago, we established dedicated organizations

whose sole purpose was to defend the country against flooding,

from sea and rivers. On a local or county level, these are called

water boards. And on a national level or federal level, it is my organization, Rijkswaterstaat.

My main message to your Committee, Mr. Chairman, is that we

have learned and continue to learn from history, especially the history of flood disasters. Each flood disaster in the Netherlands, from

the 13th century onward, has brought us new lessons to be learned

for keeping our country habitable, liveable and attractive to citizens and business.

After the floods of 1953, in which nearly 2,000 people died, we

designed our Deltaplan, primarily meant for the coastal areas. In

this Deltaplan, we developed for the first time a comprehensive

system of standards for designing dikes and barriers for the whole

country. These government-endorsed standards assure the quality

of our water defense system. All our dikes we rebuilt accordingly

and the total length of our coastline was shortened by more than

700 kilometers as a result of closing estuaries with dams or storm

surge barriers.

It took 50 years from idea to completion. In the interim, we incorporated new insights about morphological as well as ecological

processes. For these reasons, the two last barriers constructed in
45

the end of the Deltaplan are partly open and moveable: the

Easternscheldt Barrier, because of the fishery, sedimentation and

the environment, and the Stormsurge Barrier in the Rotterdam

Waterway because of shipping and sedimentation. These barriers

are closed only in case of storm surges.

In the Netherlands, as in your country, cost is a factor. In total,

over those 50 years, we invested about $15 billion in our Deltaplan

in today’s cost. Not an inconsequential cost, surely, but also a cost

that is penny to the dollar compared to costs that we would have

incurred had we not made that financial commitment.

Mr. Chairman, the Netherlands is threatened not only by sea but

also by three of Europe’s major rivers that empty into the North

Sea via my country. In 1993 and 1995, the extreme discharges of

the major rivers nearly overtopped our river dikes. Two hundred

and fifty-thousand people and their livestock were evacuated. That

event made clear again that we could not postpone upgrading the

river dikes.

We then have learned that the water defense system includes not

only technical solutions, it is not just building and maintaining

dikes. Disasters can always happen, and therefore you need evacuation plans.

We also learned that it is always important to think about zoning. That is to say, legislating the areas to be reserved for urban

development and for water. Our government designed this new policy in a document called More Room For Water, in which our spatial planning act, or land use act plays a pivotal role.

Now, if you were to ask me, what are the most important elements of our protection policy, I would say the following: know-how

and organizational structure; standards and legislation; priorities

and budget; and prevention and zoning. As to know-how, it clearly

include technology, morphological and ecological knowledge, statistics and predictions. New developments, such as sea level risk and

climate change, are important components.

To ensure that the development of this knowledge stays on the

highest level, we have a department such as mine working at the

national level as a respected partner in the international exchange

of knowledge. My department, Rijkswaterstaat, by the way, has

been around since 1798. Since yesterday, I found out that your

Army Corps is just three years older.

[Laughter.]

Mr. HOOGLAND. On a local level, we have for 800 years one issue

organizations called water boards. Their only task is water management, which includes flood protection. Water boards are public

entities with their own election and tax system.

Now I come to standards and legislation. Our standards are accepted risk levels related to the design criteria of our dikes. Those

standards are laid down in the flood defense act. For the economically most important and densely populated part of the country, we

design our dikes and dunes to be sturdy enough to withstand a

storm situation with a probability of 1 to 10,000 a year. That

means that a Dutchman, if he should live 100 years, has a chance

of 1 percent to witness such an event. For our parliament, these

odds became the acceptable standards. For the less important
46

coastal areas, we calculate the probability of 1 to 4,000, and along

the main rivers, 1 to 1,250.

Very essential is that every five years, the entire water defense

system is assessed for compliance by local water boards. A summary of these assessments is submitted to the national parliament.

In order to be able to make these assessments, it is essential to

know what the hydraulic specifications belonging to the politically

accepted standards are. In my department, Rijkswaterstaat publishes each five years, to these hydraulic specifications, in which we

implement the latest knowledge of statistics, failure mechanisms of

dikes, sea level rise and climate change.

A few words about priorities and budget. Since 1953, financing

of renovating the dikes has been a national priority. All funds for

rebuilding are allocated by the central government. Maintenance,

financially and operationally, is totally controlled by the water

boards, who in turn, tax the local population. Since the water

boards have no other responsibility than water, other priorities

never go to the detriment of the water defense system.

Finally, I get to the matter of prevention and zoning. The notion

of zoning is fairly new in our approach. We need to answer questions such as whether we reserve space for urban development or

whether we dedicate space exclusively for water. It is a tough

issue, but an issue we cannot ignore.

Last but not least, it is important to realize that total safety does

not exist, and therefore, it is essential to be prepared, for instance,

by having evacuation plans. After all, members of the Committee,

disasters do happen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you for your perspective, Mr. Hoogland.

We really appreciate it.

A quick question for you. In planning flood protection projects in

the United States, we do economic analyses to determine the benefits of protecting infrastructure, and we compare that and look at

the cost and do these cost benefit analyses. Do you do the same in

your country?

Mr. HOOGLAND. In 1953, we had a delta committee which, a part

of the delta committee was a cost benefit calculation. But we didn’t

do it afterwards in the new time, but it is a part of the policy in

the Netherlands. But it is not the only part. Because the delta committee said the economic value you can calculate, but the cost of

human life, it is incalculable. I am sorry for my language. Incalculable.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Your English is better than my Dutch.

[Laughter.]

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you for your answer.

One other question. The problem of subsidence that we have

talked about here today, is that significant in your area? Do you

see it there? Dr. Dokka mentioned benchmarks. Is coming up with

benchmarks and a reference point, is it a problem or has it been

a pretty consistent solution for you?

Mr. HOOGLAND. We have in the Netherlands an enormous subsidence of the land, especially in the western part of the country.

When you look over the last 1,000 years, then we have a subsid-
47

ence of 5 meters. From that five meters, only one meter is sea level

risk and four meters is soil subsidence.

So it is very important in our country to calculate and to measure. We have a system, geodetical system of measuring every, I

think, three or five years the whole system, and to calculate the influence of that subsidence. We use fairly deep points to sterilize our

level of measurements. But we have, I believe, 20 meters under the

normal soil level, we have a layer that is permanent, without subsidence.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you for that.

Dr. Dokka, you paint a very grim picture of what we face. Is it

worthy of investment? Can New Orleans be salvaged? Should we

move forward.

Mr. DOKKA. Absolutely. You can run the numbers for how much

Louisiana’s coast is worth. The cost benefit ratio is tremendous,

from what I understand, from what the coast is worth and what

it would cost to fix it.

It is also just too important not to be fixed. If people like $3 a

gallon gasoline now, they are going to love the future if we do nothing.

But another important point is that this does not just affect the

Louisiana coast. It affects the entire Gulf Coast and the folks in

Texas have issues as well. But they are not quite as far along in

discovering it.

Mr. BOUSTANY. How do we plan for subsidence? I am not an engineer, but I would be interested in hearing your insights on that.

Mr. DOKKA. Well, if I could predict things, I would be buying lottery tickets, frankly. But I think our best guess, our best way of

making intelligent guesses, is to look at the most recent past and

then try to project that into the future. If we want to understand

how the entire coast works, you have to look at thousands of years

of history. However, for trying to understand these problems right

now, trying to make sure that our people are safe for the next 50

years, I think it makes sense to go back and look at the last 50

years.

However, predicting, one thing that we can’t predict, how are

people going to react to this. There are things we can do. The

Dutch obviously live very well below sea level. People in New Orleans have done that as well. I think there are solutions, it is just

a matter of beginning to understand what the problem actually is.

Mr. BOUSTANY. And the problem of reference points in Louisiana,

it is a real problem. That is what I gather from your testimony.

Mr. DOKKA. The earth is dynamic. We have ways of fixing that.

We have right now half of our plan to come up with a high-tech

solution, essentially using a global positioning system, is halfway

completed. The Corps is using these data right now to try to figure

out exactly how to remedy the situation in New Orleans.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Dr. Dokka.

At this time I am going to defer to the Ranking Member, Ms.

Johnson, to ask questions.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have

any questions. I will offer an apology to this panel for being out

most of your testimony. I was listening part of the time, I was trying to solve a district problem with a visitor back there.
48

I thank you very much coming to spend your time, and I know

that we will probably be in touch again before this is all over.

Thanks.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I am pleased to recognize Mr. Gilchrest for five

minutes.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Boustany.

I apologize, too, I was in a briefing about Iraq for the last hour

or so. Fascinating, innovative perspectives on that situation.

But I wanted to, you know, we come in here and I didn’t listen

to you speak, I really apologize. But we have your testimony and

I will take a look at it over the next couple of days.

I wanted to ask, first of all, I want to welcome Dr. Dalrymple,

a fellow Marylander. Welcome to Washington.

Mr. DALRYMPLE. Thank you, sir.

Mr. GILCHREST. I wanted to ask Mr. Hoogland, you probably

stated this already, but do you see the situation in the Netherlands

similar to the situation in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico?

Mr. HOOGLAND. There is some similarity. But I think there is

something, there are very big differences, too. We don’t know hurricanes. We have floods from storm surges, and a storm surge is

quite different from a hurricane. We have river floods, you have

river floods as well.

But living below sea level and being protected by dikes, you call

them levees, that is similar to our situation. So there are similarities, but there are big differences, too.

Mr. GILCHREST. The New York Times science section, maybe a

month ago or so now, two months probably, had a fascinating article on your technology to keep Holland dry. Do you see similar

technologies appropriate for New Orleans? I am not sure where you

would put that. I mean, some of your technology would be appropriate for coastal Louisiana or New Orleans, or is the situation so

different that some of those innovative technological pumps that

you use would be appropriate?

Mr. HOOGLAND. I think so. I think there are possibilities. But the

most important thing about what I tried to tell today was the political commitment of the system. Political commitment to the standards is essential in the Dutch system. Political commitment for the

standards, political commitment for, we call it structural funding

of budget and political commitment for assessments for compliance

to the standards. That is essential in the political system in the

Netherlands.

The next step, when it has been done, the next step is a step for

technicians.

Mr. GILCHREST. What was the next step?

Mr. HOOGLAND. When you have political commitment for the

standards, then technicians can transform those standards in several solutions. I heard this morning General Strock telling about

the several solutions they have, they can present with their cost

benefit effects, and with all the other effects.

But first of all, it was my message, there has to be political

agreement for the standards you want to guarantee to your citizens. That is what we have done in the Netherlands. That is essential.
49

Mr. GILCHREST. My time is almost expired, and I wanted to get

in another question. But thank you, that is well appreciated. It has

an impact on our thinking.

Dr. Dokka, given all the proposals, whether it is 2050 or LSA or

just the myriad of CWPRA programs that have been happening

there that have apparently been pretty successful, do you see the

policy which seems to me to be pretty urgent, because you could

get another Wilma, Katrina, Rita, whatever, next season, and

whatever you have done would be undone.

Can you tell us the process, the system that you would employ

to restore coastal Louisiana in all the myriad of things that have

been discussed here, to do it in a way that would be timely? We

have heard you have to have the benefit to cost analysis, you have

to have all these studies done and it is going to take five years, ten

years, twenty years or whatever. Is the CWPRA model appropriate

for us to fund larger sums of money to get some of these projects

underway faster?

Mr. DOKKA. I am not an expert on these particular programs

other than to say than, let’s say, CWPRA, for instance, these are

directed at the wetlands. But I think what I am saying here is that

what is happening in the coast is happening everywhere. It is not

just the wetlands. Most folks in Louisiana, contrary to popular belief, we do not live in the wetlands. We actually live on high

ground.

So what we need to integrate into the dialogue at this particular

point are ways that we can protect our people to the fact that the

land is subsiding, the world’s oceans are rising. They may rise

much more quickly into the future. That is one of the difficult

things about prediction.

But I think what needs to be done is, we need to add that additional component into that and then, as best we can, integrate all

of these things together.

Mr. GILCHREST. Could I have just one more question?

Mr. BOUSTANY. I was going to say, Mr. Gilchrest, I’m feeling generous with time, knowing your interest in all this. So by all means.

Mr. GILCHREST. I just want to ask, when we hear, and then subsequent to that, when we say we can protect people against a category 5 hurricane, and we have heard that in a number of different

places from a number of different people, and somebody just said

here, and I think it might have been you, Dr. Dokka, this is a very

dynamic ecological system.

How do you protect, and a category 5 hurricane I guess is down

there right now. Can you protect lower Louisiana and New Orleans

from a category 5 hurricane?

Mr. DOKKA. The short answer is, I think you can. I think the

question is, can you afford it. The same issues, in the United

States, if you go through and look at most of the major cities, people live in risk. Either you are living next to an active volcano that

is going to blow up in our lifetimes, or there is going to be a major

earthquake in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle. I can go down

the list. These are risky places to live. However, this is where we

live.

And we assume the risk, and we need to understand what that

risk is. And engineering, the Corps of Engineers, have the tools to
50

do this. We cannot, as the member indicated before, we cannot plan

for the unexpected.

Mr. GILCHREST. I think what I am trying to get at is, the Nation

needs to be convinced that all of us should share in the risk of

those folks who choose to live in coastal Louisiana. It is the Nation.

Everybody is going to give money to the Red Cross. You have everybody that will go down under emergencies and save lives. There

is no question that that type of compassion is out there.

The question, though, is, and I hear it in my district, and I hear

it from other members in their districts, through town meetings

and just meeting people, and that is why I asked the question

about a category 5 hurricane. The Nation, I think, to some extent,

needs to have some sense of certainty that the money that we have

put in over the next couple of years and the money that it will take

to sustain those areas, not just coastal Louisiana or Mississippi, my

coastal district as well, North Carolina, Florida, the Nation needs

to have some sense, because right now they are a little unsettled

that we can do this in such a way that you can protect lives and

property, it is sustainable and it is all reasonably affordable.

Mr. DOKKA. From the perspective of a scientist or engineer, we

have the capabilities of doing these things. However, really, I think

perhaps maybe where you would really like to go on that question

is, what we have been doing up to this point has worked very well,

to a point. We are discovering more and more about how this world

works, and we are going to have to then step up, we are going to

have to get better, we are going to have to understand the earth

a lot better before we are going to be able to make the kind of certainty, you are asking me about certainty.

I think we can do this. It is just that we have to do things smarter.

Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. I have a few more questions before

we conclude the hearing.

First of all, Dr. Dalrymple, I was kind of intrigued when I saw

the slides that you showed. In very close proximity to the levees

were trees. Does this pose a risk to the levees, particularly those

which are earthen?

Mr. DALRYMPLE. I think they can. I don’t know that it was a

problem there. The trees are fairly well back from the levees. But

there are indeed trees in peoples’ back yards and so forth. I think

the problem is if you get roots growing through the levees, it poses

a problem. But I think this is something that they look for.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. I know you mentioned engineering

constraints, especially with regard to the prediction of subsidence.

Obviously, my earlier questions were kind of pointed in that direction, and trying to predict it and so forth. It seems to me to be a

very challenging problem from an engineering standpoint.

Mr. DALRYMPLE. I believe it is. The New Orleans district does in

fact repair the levees on a routine basis, that is, add more elevation

to the levees as they subside.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Does the elevation, as you add more elevation,

you are adding weight, and I guess it is a calculation problem to

sort of maintain some sort of equilibrium?

Mr. DALRYMPLE. Right.
51

Mr. BOUSTANY. Dr. Reed, your comments about the dynamic nature of our wetlands and the interaction with storms and so forth

was interesting. Having lived down in southwest Louisiana, I certainly have seen it directly and experienced that sort of dynamic

state.

Can you comment on the salt intrusion and what effect it has on

wetlands after a major storm surge like this? I certainly saw devastated farm land and marsh, it looked like it had been burned

over by the salt. What is the long lasting effect with replenishing

a marsh after this type of event?

Ms. REED. That is a very good question. When we look at these

marshes immediately after the storm, they look brown, they look

dead. We found a number of experimental studies, this is the kind

of thing that scientists can look at in laboratories where you take

plants in, you flood them as if there would be a storm and they return to normal conditions and see what happens.

The good news is that much of that fresh vegetation in the fresh

marsh areas, as long as the storm surge drains away fairly quickly

and doesn’t stay there for a long time, and as long as there is a

return to fairly normal hydrologic conditions, the salinity goes back

the way it was, perhaps there is some rainfall and the winter season, as we might normally have. Then many of those plants will

come back during the spring. So experimental studies really show

that, and I think we start to see that on the ground, too.

The problem comes, and this may indeed be more of a problem

in southwestern Louisiana, where we had hydrologic barriers

across the landscape, for one reason or another. Sometimes they

are roads or sometimes they are duck ponds, frankly. The water

stays in there longer, a bit like the City of New Orleans. It just

doesn’t drain out when there is a levee around very effectively.

That saltwater, particularly in your district where it is very close

to the Gulf of Mexico and you get very high salinity waters coming

in, if that water stays there too long, then we could have a problem.

The thing is to return it to normal hydrology as quickly as possible. And we have to think about what we want those areas to be

and really whether or not having fresh marsh or the expectation

of fresh marsh very close to the coast as we have there is viable

in the long term. Or we can plan for systems to allow us to get that

water out quicker, and then the marsh will stand a good chance.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you. Can our coastal marsh erosion ever

be reversed, or are we going to be content with just slowing down

this process?

Ms. REED. That is a very good question. I was part of the Coast

2050 team when we sat down essentially with a blank sheet of

paper and worked out what we would want to do for the coast.

Even with the very ambitious plans laid out there, when we think

about the state that our coast is in already, how degraded it is and

how that degradation is expected to continue, even those very ambitious plans laid out in the 2050 plan didn’t really bring much

back of what we had lost.

As you know from the report, the idea was to kind of stem the

tide, if you like. What will happen, however, is there will be different things in different areas. That kind of evaluation of how
52

much you gain versus how much you lose, if you do it on the whole

coast basis, then you can’t get it back.

But effectively when you do restoration, you don’t do the same

thing in every area, you don’t apply the same tool in every area.

So in some areas we really do stand a chance of growing marsh

back. In other areas, it is really a matter of managing the system

and trying to slow the loss as much as can, just because the process

is different. And as it seems like you know, your district is one of

those ares where actually bringing marsh back with natural processes is very difficult.

However, we do have other approaches, and we can mechanically

move sediment around in systems. So if we want to bring marshes

back in southwestern Louisiana, then we just need a different kind

of approach.

Mr. BOUSTANY. Do you have an estimate of what we have lost

permanently, particularly in southeast Louisiana, in terms of barrier islands and also land mass? Or is it too soon to know what we

are going to end up with?

Ms. REED. Well, it’s really too soon to know. You have probably

seen some of these comparisons of satellite imagery being in some

of the media that have been produced. It is important to recognize

firstly that some of the marshes can come back. As I noted in my

remarks, some of the marshes close to the city are already growing

back really very well, and many others were unscathed. So we have

to wait for next growing season really to see what the situation in

the marshes is.

On the barrier islands, we know from previous storms, we know

from Ivan, we know from Georges, we know from Andrew, that

they always look worse immediately after the storm. Actually that

sand recovery process is really very effective. It is limited by how

much sand we have in the system. For barrier islands, going out

there immediately with a dredge is not the best thing. Rather, you

should wait and see how those natural healing processes proceed.

So we can’t tell yet, I’m afraid.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I am going to wrap up here, but one question,

one line of inquiry to Mr. Butler. Can fresh water and sediment be

drawn off the Mississippi River in order to provide for marsh restoration without impacting navigation? Do you have thoughts on

that?

Mr. BUTLER. Mr. Chairman, yes, I would tell you that first off,

I am not a hydrologist. I know we have had a lot of discussion

along those lines. I think it is something that is really worthwhile

discussing, and it has a lot of real possibilities. I think we could

probably do that and not impact navigation significantly.

Mr. BOUSTANY. I know with respect to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, we had a challenge with regard to the locks, you know,

whether to keep them open or closed, facilitate drainage or create

currents for navigation. It was an ongoing problem. We managed

to solve it by coming up with a timetable, and you had mentioned

something along those lines, so I appreciate your thoughts on that.

Something we can perhaps further work on, as well.

I want to thank all of you for your testimony. It has been very

informative. The questions that we have asked you have answered
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very forthrightly and we really appreciate it. Thank you. We will

conclude the hearing.

[Whereupon, at 1:42 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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Æ