Improved levees expose French Quarter

As the photo above (from the Advocate) shows, work on New Orleans levees is moving ahead. But, what I find interesting, is that the stronger levees shift increase the risk of something happening to the French Quarter during the next major storm event. The COE largely dismisses the notion:

Cecil Soileau, a corps consultant and former corps engineer who designed many of the levees, said alarm over the threat to the Quarter is overblown.

“We’ve had people in the past saying Jackson Square would be inundated with 26 feet of water and only the steeple of the cathedral would be sticking up,” Soileau said. “And I don’t think that’s a realistic situation.”

Of course, lots of scientists had forecast how damage to the levees in a Category 4 storm would cause the city to get nearly destroyed and we can see how seriously the feds took those warnings.