The Next Steps for New Orleans
A major Corps of Engineers contract moves southern Louisiana toward the next phase of recovery.
In the weeks and months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, much of the effort by the US Army Corps of Engineers involved emergency response and repair work. First came 43 days of removing the water—enlarging breaches in some of the already-damaged levees and floodwalls to let water flow out of the city and working to get damaged pumps back online. Then came efforts to restore levee protection up to pre-Katrina levels before the beginning of the 2006 hurricane season. Now the corps is embarking on the next phase, awarding the first of the major contracts to achieve increased levels of flood protection for New Orleans and southern Louisiana.
The $150 million contract for engineering services was awarded late last year to a joint venture led by Bioengineering Group Inc., based in Salem, MA, and ARCADIS, an international firm that has its US headquarters in Highlands Ranch, CO. The team also includes HNTB, Tetra Tech, C.H. Fenstermaker & Associates, and others. Work under the contract will be performed for the Hurricane Protection Office and the Protection Restoration Office of the New Orleans District of the Army Corps.
 |
Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) |
| A vessel was pushed on shore in south Plaquemines
Parish when Hurricane Katrina made landfall. |
“Getting this contract awarded is a milestone for the corps in the transition from the disaster response phase to the improved protection phase,” says Wendi Goldsmith, Bioengineering Group’s president. The contract covers work in New Orleans and southern Louisiana, including evaluation, design, and construction management of improvements and upgrades to existing infrastructure like levees and floodwalls. The work also will focus on improving risk-management strategies—for example, by building floodgates at some of the canals rather than trying to protect the perimeter of the entire canal system. Work also will include planning and analysis for improved levels of flood protection for the area.
To supplement the structural solutions, another focus will be restoration of wetlands, land bridges, and barrier islands. “It’s the ‘multiple lines of defense’ concept that identifies the barrier islands, the coastal marshes, and various shallow-water and higher-elevation configurations,” explains Goldsmith. “All of these landscape elements function as speed bumps or friction-providing features. By increasing their functionality, it reduces the height and physical impact level of potential storm surges. One of the best ways to manage risk is not just to build a line of defense such as a levee, but to address the synergistic elements and design them together resulting in a much more functional system.”
The Barataria Basin land bridge restoration project, she notes, is one of the highest-priority coastal ecosystem projects that is linked to hurricane protection. “Many of the leading scientists and engineers are aware that there are other good linkages, but in some cases the planning and study process is not yet complete, and some of the science about just how well the wetlands function is still in its infancy.” It can be difficult to calibrate models in the absence of actual events like Category 5 hurricanes or major storm surges. “However, on a qualitative level, there’s a widespread understanding of how important these elements can be,” she continues. “The detailed engineering procedures are catching up to account for that in planning and design.”
 |
Photo: DigitalGlobe |
| Levee break at Surekote Road on New Orleans’s east side |
In addition to the technical aspects, though, part of the work under the contract will involve helping achieve a shift in strategy for federal officials. “When you’re dealing with ecological resources in urban settings, there will be many different interest groups and many different opinions,” says Goldsmith. This is especially true in the area affected by Katrina; it’s no secret that the corps has faced intense criticism since the unprecedented effects of the 2005 hurricane season, and emotions in the region have run high. Part of an engineering management company’s job, she believes, is to help government agencies find improved ways to work with the public and with each other.
As an example, she describes a project that took place several years ago in Massachusetts, where her company was working under contract to the state on the master plan for a linear park, one of the components in the “Emerald Necklace” of parks and green spaces designed in the late 1800s by Frederick Law Olmsted. The City of Cambridge proposed routing some of its stormwater runoff into the park. Although the state agency in charge of the project initially was inclined to reject the idea, further study by the Bioengineering Group showed that the plan actually would work to both the city’s and the park’s advantage if done correctly. “Stormwater infrastructure is intercepting all the water nature intended your park to have,” Goldsmith recalls telling the state agency. “It hadn’t occurred to anyone that stormwater could be handled as an ecological resource.” This was a surprise not only to the state agency but also to the city’s department of public works and various stakeholder organizations, who were skeptical when first presented with the agreement. “But in the end, all the key parties have become converts and are now advocates for this type of win-win solution,” says Goldsmith.
Helping officials from disparate agencies achieve that sort of understanding is part of the goal as she sees it. “Any consultant supporting the corps in their current mission in Louisiana needs to be not only at the top of their game technically but also incredibly strong with all of the nontechnical issues that projects live and die by,” she says. “We need to be there adding those skills to the team and aiding a successful outcome at every step in the process.”
Bioengineering Group also has a decade and a half of experience with river and coastal restoration projects, some of them for the Corps of Engineers’ New York District. In addition to bringing technical expertise, Goldsmith says, the company “helped them elaborate on their stakeholder involvement process. Historically the New York District did not have a well-defined or, in their own assessment, terribly effective procedure to follow.” Part of the job was helping the district identify what to look for in a qualified facilitator, when to hold stakeholder meetings and how best to structure them, and how to disseminate information to and solicit input from stakeholders.
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“I think the corps—who have been maligned—deserve recognition for moving forward,” she says. “They’ve been involved in some very thoughtful self-assessment and self-critique, extracting valuable lessons learned and working to apply those looking forward. This is the turning point in looking from shoring things up that went wrong to looking at a better future condition.”
Stormwater has published several articles on the efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi since the 2005 hurricanes, all of them dealing with the disaster-response efforts both soon after the storms and again a year later. (See “Coping After Katrina” and “Trial by Hurricane” in the March/April 2006 issue, and “Shifting Currents” in the May 2007 issue.) We plan to follow up periodically on the progress of the work as it continues.
September 2007
The Next Steps for New Orleans
A major Corps of Engineers contract moves southern Louisiana toward the next phase of recovery.
In the weeks and months after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, much of the effort by the US Army Corps of Engineers involved emergency response and repair work. First came 43 days of removing the water—enlarging breaches in some of the already-damaged levees and floodwalls to let water flow out of the city and working to get damaged pumps back online. Then came efforts to restore levee protection up to pre-Katrina levels before the beginning of the 2006 hurricane season. Now the corps is embarking on the next phase, awarding the first of the major contracts to achieve increased levels of flood protection for New Orleans and southern Louisiana.
The $150 million contract for engineering services was awarded late last year to a joint venture led by Bioengineering Group Inc., based in Salem, MA, and ARCADIS, an international firm that has its US headquarters in Highlands Ranch, CO. The team also includes HNTB, Tetra Tech, C.H. Fenstermaker & Associates, and others. Work under the contract will be performed for the Hurricane Protection Office and the Protection Restoration Office of the New Orleans District of the Army Corps.
|
Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) |
| A vessel was pushed on shore in south Plaquemines
Parish when Hurricane Katrina made landfall. |
“Getting this contract awarded is a milestone for the corps in the transition from the disaster response phase to the improved protection phase,” says Wendi Goldsmith, Bioengineering Group’s president. The contract covers work in New Orleans and southern Louisiana, including evaluation, design, and construction management of improvements and upgrades to existing infrastructure like levees and floodwalls. The work also will focus on improving risk-management strategies—for example, by building floodgates at some of the canals rather than trying to protect the perimeter of the entire canal system. Work also will include planning and analysis for improved levels of flood protection for the area.
To supplement the structural solutions, another focus will be restoration of wetlands, land bridges, and barrier islands. “It’s the ‘multiple lines of defense’ concept that identifies the barrier islands, the coastal marshes, and various shallow-water and higher-elevation configurations,” explains Goldsmith. “All of these landscape elements function as speed bumps or friction-providing features. By increasing their functionality, it reduces the height and physical impact level of potential storm surges. One of the best ways to manage risk is not just to build a line of defense such as a levee, but to address the synergistic elements and design them together resulting in a much more functional system.”
The Barataria Basin land bridge restoration project, she notes, is one of the highest-priority coastal ecosystem projects that is linked to hurricane protection. “Many of the leading scientists and engineers are aware that there are other good linkages, but in some cases the planning and study process is not yet complete, and some of the science about just how well the wetlands function is still in its infancy.” It can be difficult to calibrate models in the absence of actual events like Category 5 hurricanes or major storm surges. “However, on a qualitative level, there’s a widespread understanding of how important these elements can be,” she continues. “The detailed engineering procedures are catching up to account for that in planning and design.”
|
Photo: DigitalGlobe |
| Levee break at Surekote Road on New Orleans’s east side |
In addition to the technical aspects, though, part of the work under the contract will involve helping achieve a shift in strategy for federal officials. “When you’re dealing with ecological resources in urban settings, there will be many different interest groups and many different opinions,” says Goldsmith. This is especially true in the area affected by Katrina; it’s no secret that the corps has faced intense criticism since the unprecedented effects of the 2005 hurricane season, and emotions in the region have run high. Part of an engineering management company’s job, she believes, is to help government agencies find improved ways to work with the public and with each other.
As an example, she describes a project that took place several years ago in Massachusetts, where her company was working under contract to the state on the master plan for a linear park, one of the components in the “Emerald Necklace” of parks and green spaces designed in the late 1800s by Frederick Law Olmsted. The City of Cambridge proposed routing some of its stormwater runoff into the park. Although the state agency in charge of the project initially was inclined to reject the idea, further study by the Bioengineering Group showed that the plan actually would work to both the city’s and the park’s advantage if done correctly. “Stormwater infrastructure is intercepting all the water nature intended your park to have,” Goldsmith recalls telling the state agency. “It hadn’t occurred to anyone that stormwater could be handled as an ecological resource.” This was a surprise not only to the state agency but also to the city’s department of public works and various stakeholder organizations, who were skeptical when first presented with the agreement. “But in the end, all the key parties have become converts and are now advocates for this type of win-win solution,” says Goldsmith.
Helping officials from disparate agencies achieve that sort of understanding is part of the goal as she sees it. “Any consultant supporting the corps in their current mission in Louisiana needs to be not only at the top of their game technically but also incredibly strong with all of the nontechnical issues that projects live and die by,” she says. “We need to be there adding those skills to the team and aiding a successful outcome at every step in the process.”
Bioengineering Group also has a decade and a half of experience with river and coastal restoration projects, some of them for the Corps of Engineers’ New York District. In addition to bringing technical expertise, Goldsmith says, the company “helped them elaborate on their stakeholder involvement process. Historically the New York District did not have a well-defined or, in their own assessment, terribly effective procedure to follow.” Part of the job was helping the district identify what to look for in a qualified facilitator, when to hold stakeholder meetings and how best to structure them, and how to disseminate information to and solicit input from stakeholders.
“I think the corps—who have been maligned—deserve recognition for moving forward,” she says. “They’ve been involved in some very thoughtful self-assessment and self-critique, extracting valuable lessons learned and working to apply those looking forward. This is the turning point in looking from shoring things up that went wrong to looking at a better future condition.”
Stormwater has published several articles on the efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi since the 2005 hurricanes, all of them dealing with the disaster-response efforts both soon after the storms and again a year later. (See “Coping After Katrina” and “Trial by Hurricane” in the March/April 2006 issue, and “Shifting Currents” in the May 2007 issue.) We plan to follow up periodically on the progress of the work as it continues.