Corps: New Orleans levee upgrades nearly ready

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Five years after Hurricane Katrina flooded more than 80 percent of this city, the Army Corps of Engineers says billions of dollars of work has made the city much safer and many of its defenses could withstand a storm as strong as the deadly 2005 hurricane.

Surprisingly, many locals — even the vocal critics of the Army Corps — say its assessment of work done on the levee system is not far off the mark.

Since Katrina flooded New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, and killed more than 1,800 people, New Orleans has become a round-the-clock construction site, and Congress gave the Army Corps more than $14 billion to fix and upgrade the levees and other defenses.

Numerous breaches in the hurricane protection system led to the flooding that devastated the New Orleans area. The corps says about half of the work is complete, and the rest should be finished by next summer.