Did Man-Made Canals Channel Katrina's Storm Surge?

HOPEDALE, La., Sept. 20, 2005 -- -- It's becoming a controversial question: Was there any reason why certain areas around New Orleans -- such as St. Bernard Parish -- were hit with more devastating floodwaters than others?

"That water came from that way," says oyster farmer Stacy Geraci, motioning from the rubble of what used to be his home toward the northeast. "See which way them poles are bent?" he asks. "That means it came straight from the Gulf, and from the Gulf Outlet."

The threat that the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet -- sometimes referred to by its acronym, "Mr. Go" -- would bring floodwaters into the region during a hurricane has been a major fear in St. Bernard Parish for years. Intended to stimulate economic development by serving as a shortcut for commercial and shipping interests from the Gulf of Mexico to the Port of New Orleans, Mr. Go was chopped through the marshlands by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s.

The commercial benefits have not come anywhere near projections. But now critics say it served as a backdoor for a surge of water pushed into the city by Hurricane Katrina.

"If Mr. Go did not exist, initial indications are that you would not have seen a surge tide nearly as high," says environmentalist Mike Tidwell, author of "Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast."

Before Mr. Go and its adjacent waterways were built, Tidwell says, the storm surge would have dissipated in marshes and other wetlands that protected the city in storms past. "What Mr. Go does is, it allows the surge tide to circumvent those barriers by funneling into the watery pathway this avenue. It literally carries the surge tide into the city.

"It causes the surge to go into a narrow neck and to rise higher than it would normally be, 20 [percent] to 40 percent higher, so you are basically creating this moving narrow wall of water," says Tidwell.

Col. Richard Wagenaar, commander of the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers, disagrees with this theory. "There's a lot of people who want to blame Mr. Go for this and I'm not so sure it's to blame," Wagenaar says. "I think this water, this 20-plus surge, plus waves, would have come in here regardless of whether Mr. Go was there or not."