Katrina flooding victims in court to seek damages

NEW ORLEANS—A coastal geologist testified Monday that he warned the Army Corps of Engineers decades ago about the dangers of the shipping channel that funneled Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge into New Orleans.
Sherwood Gagliano, 73, called con-struction of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, dug in the 1960s, “one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the United States.”
He was testifying for the plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit that charges the corps with responsibility for flooding during Katrina, which hit in August 2005.
Lucille Franz, who lost her home and a sister, has joined four other residents and a business who claim the corps owes them damages because Katrina’s storm surge washed out levees along the 75-mile-long channel.
Much is at stake in the trial, which is being heard by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. without a jury. If the plaintiffs are victorious, more than 120,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities could have a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.
“It will be used as a guide,” said Duval, who noted the case was the first major trial against the government since Hurricane Katrina.
Gagliano, long considered a father of coastal science in Louisiana, said Monday he studied initial proposals for the channel, which links the Gulf of Mexico with the port of New Orleans, in the 1950s and prepared reports for the corps on environmental and flood risks.
In the 1970s, Gagliano said he repeated his warning that the MRGO could cause catastrophic flooding and destroy protective wetlands southeast of New Orleans.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue more than 140 square miles of wetlands were destroyed by the MRGO, an area six times the size of Manhattan.
During cross-examination, the gov-ernment began to mount a defense by arguing that the Army Corps of Engineers took steps to make the shipping channel less dangerous, such as planting grass on the channel’s banks and stabilizing them with rocks.
Gagliano acknowledged the corps took some steps to mitigate the channel’s danger, but said they were minimal.
The residents argue the corps’ poor maintenance of the MRGO led to the wipeout of St. Bernard Parish and the city’s Lower Ninth Ward. They are asking for damages between $300,000 and $400,000 for each individual.
Franz, 75, lost her home in the Lower 9th Ward, and her sister drowned at St. Rita’s nursing home in St. Bernard near the MRGO, also known as “Mister Go.”
“They are responsible,” she said of the corps. “We wouldn’t have had that kind of water if it hadn’t been for the MRGO.”