This was how the Army Corps of Engineers tried to spin it in the aftermath of the storm. But key levees, including the 17th Street and London Avenue canals in the heart of the city, failed with water well below levels they were designed to withstand.
As the Army Corps eventually conceded, they were breached because of flawed engineering and collapsed because they were junk. Sheet piling — metal planks driven into the ground to reinforce levees and flood walls — didn’t run deep enough. Corps geologists botched tests that should have determined soil stability below the levees. The Corps and local levee boards that maintain flood barriers pinched pennies, and suddenly Katrina became the nation’s first $200 billion disaster.