New Orleans Flood Defenses

Over ten years after the devastating Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has just recently finished a $731 million Permanent Canal Closures and Pumps project as of April 2018, according to an article in the February issue of ASCE. The project consists of three massive pumping stations that are designed to reduce the city’s risk of flood surges with critical draining features in the event of another major storm.

The article gives a brief history on the greater New Orleans region’s propensity for severe flooding, most famously with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 which displaced 80% of its residents and caused numerous casualties.

Following Katrina, the city began to work on a Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System, which includes a series of components designed to withstand a 100-year storm. The project includes an auxiliary building, a generator building, and a concrete bypass gate structure, ultimately isolating outfall canals to prevent them from running into Lake Pontchartrain.

​Before this project, New Orleans relied on outdated pumping systems, which couldn’t keep up with the heavy flooding and so contributed to overflow. These updated pumping projects serve to protect residents and prevent severe damage in the case of another deadly storm, and are a critical example of the importance of smart, modern engineering technologies.