The central problem (as is often the case in our hi-tech world run by no-tech people) could very well be a lack of proper flood control design and implementation.
It is not the amount of funding that counts, but the wise use of what is available.
From a Tech Central Station article, Breaks in the Levee LogicBy Duane D. Freese Published 09/02/2005:
[…] ["]The levees broke, didn't they? That's what helped mess up the rescue effort, didn't it? And there were cuts in federal help, weren't there?["]The answers to all these questions are yes. But, the fact is, they miss an important point, which The New York Times editorialists might have discovered had they read their own news story by Andrew Revkin and Christopher Drew. The reporters quoted Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, about how surprising it was that the break in the levee was "a section that was just upgraded."
"It did not have an earthen levee," he told them. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feet thick."
Worse for the editorial writers were statements by the chief engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen Carl Strock: "I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case. Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place."
The reason: the funding would only have completed an upgrade of the levees to a protect against a level 3 hurricane. Katrina was a level 4 plus. […] [my emphasis and ellipses]
It appears to me that the basic problem was a lack of basic system engineering design.
There was no safety valve.
There was no way to get rid of the excess water by deliberate partial flooding before the water poured over the concrete levee, undermined its foundations, caused a total collapse of the large section and flooded most of the city.
In the 1927 flood the city fathers dynamited a section of the levee below the city in order to save New Orleans and its citizens.
But despite history and a well known threat, there was no safety valve.
