NO levee related story....
http://www.wdsu.com/news/5055164/detail.html
SOUTHPORT, Fla. -- A construction company based in the Florida Panhandle has denied allegations in a federal lawsuit that it was partly to blame for the failure of a New Orleans levee after Hurricane Katrina.
Daniel Becnel Jr., a Reserve lawyer, sued Gulf Group Inc. of Southport, a Panama City suburb, in New Orleans last week. He claims vehicles and heavy equipment the company left on the 17th Street Canal levee contributed to its failure. Gulf Group was building a bridge near the levee.
Thanks for the ping.
I saw an aerial image of the 17th Street Canal before the levee failed in which there was a a construction barge just southeast of the Hammond Highway bridge, but I can't locate it now.
In any event, I've looked for the barge in the post storm imagery and have been unable to spot it, inside or outside the levees. It could have been removed prior to the storm, it could be well upstream now, or it might have gone through the breach and sank. Given the similarities between the London Canal breaches and the 17th Street Canal breaches, I am currently operating from the assumption that the construction barge played no part in the 17th Street Canal breach. (Not to be confused with the grain barge located on the wrong side of the breach east of the Industrial Canal, which probably didn't cause that breach either.)
As to dredging being a cause of the failures, it is mathematically possible. It depends on how close to the sides of the canal they dredged and the exact structural cross section details of the levee/floodwall. Given that the CoE would almost certainly have supervised the dredging, and that I've yet to see gross stupidity on the part of the CoE, I rate the likelihood of dredging being a direct or contributory factor in the 17th Street Canal breach as being very low.