Additional $1.5 billion sought for rebuilding

Officials can't promise that the levees will withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, promising to build the most protective levees that hurricane-ravaged New Orleans has ever seen, announced Thursday it will seek an additional $1.5 billion from Congress to help the city rebuild its flood defenses.
"The levee system will be better and safer than it's ever been before," said Donald Powell, the federal official overseeing Gulf Coast reconstruction in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
While promising to have adequate levees in place for next year's hurricane season, however, federal officials are unable to promise that the levees ultimately completed around New Orleans two years from now will be able to withstand the assault of a Category 5 hurricane.
Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Aug. 29, flooding New Orleans and killing more than 1,300 people along the Gulf Coast.
Funding falls short
Engineering experts say the federal funding now envisioned for levees falls far short of what is needed to protect New Orleans, situated below sea level, from the worst possible storm.
Rebuilding the city's levees to withstand a Category 5 storm could cost more than $30 billion -- 10 times the $3.1 billion in spending that the White House touted on Thursday, with $1.6 billion already committed and President Bush now seeking another $1.5 billion.
"I don't think we can design a system that can compete with Mother Nature," Powell said at a White House briefing.
"What we're saying is that we are going to do whatever is necessary to make sure we have stronger and better levee systems than we've ever had," he said. "The federal government is committed to building the best levee system known in the world."
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, meeting with officials at the White House and on Capitol Hill on Thursday, suggested Katrina has become "the new standard" against which New Orleans measures its hurricane defenses.