Half a dozen large storms out to sea, and New Orleans is already sinking

From Tom Baldwin in Washington

THE Atlantic hurricane season opened yesterday amid reports showing that New Orleans is sinking even more rapidly than thought. They also said that the levee system overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina was built with outdated information and that half a dozen large storms are already brewing at sea.

A 6,000-page analysis of the Gulf Coast defences, published yesterday by the US Army Corps of Engineers, detailed a series of construction and design failures that led to the breach of the levees last August, which resulted in more than 1,500 deaths.

“The system did not perform as a system,” the report said. “The hurricane protection in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only.”

Responding to criticism after Katrina, the Corps is spending about $4 billion (£2 billion) fixing the levee system and claims that protection is better than it was before the hurricane.

Lieutenant-General Carl Strock, the Corps chief, said: “Words alone will not restore trust in the Corps.” He added that the Corps was committed “to fulfilling our important responsibilities”.

But last month a report by a team of engineers from the University of California said that the Corps was dysfunctional and could not be relied upon.

Residents’ confidence was shaken this week when a 400ft (120m) rebuilt stretch of levee in southern Louisiana slumped by more than 3ft.

Satellite-radar research reported in Nature magazine suggested that some areas around New Orleans are sinking four or five times faster than the rest of the city.

“My concern is the very low-lying areas,” Tim Dixon, a geophysicist, said. “Those areas are death traps. I don’t think those areas should be rebuilt.”

The report blames the subsidence on overdevelopment, drainage and natural seismic shifts.

Scienitists also predict that there will be storms of at least force 4, and possibly 6, during the latest hurricane season, which lasts until the end of November.

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