By mid-March, only about 3,000 feet of a hardened, 123-mile-long storm-surge defensive ring around New Orleans remains to be closed. Contractors have sheet pile and HESCO baskets on hand to defend those last points in case of storm emergency.
The city's storm surge risk reduction system is undergoing a $14.6 billion upgrade under the direction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers following Hurricane Katrina's devastation in August 2005.
The new system's design is based on computer modeling of 152 storms with multiple criteria and approach paths to identify discrete vulnerabilities under a host of scenarios.
