In a ruling that vindicates New Orleans residents long-ignored complaints, and opens the door to lawsuits and settlements that could amount to billions of dollars, a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to maintain the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a navigation channel, makes it liable for the worst flooding of Katrina.

Flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina killed 700 people in New Orleans alone and devastated the impoverished Lower Ninth Ward. The cost of property damage in the region was put at more than $100 billion.

"The corps' lassitude and failure to fulfill its duties resulted in a catastrophic loss of human life and property in unprecedented proportions," U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval wrote.


The ruling initially awards only $720,000 in damages to three individuals and a business. However, it opens the way for "billions of dollars of liability for the government," according to Pierce O'Donnell, the Los Angeles-based lawyer for the four successful plaintiffs. Source: Flooding from Hurricane Katrina was man-made disaster, judge rules



Nearly half a million legal claims have already been filed against the Army Corps of Engineers since Katrina swept ashore on August 29, 2005. The Bush administration refused to settle any of them in the absence of a legal ruling, despite the fact that the risks of disaster were known to corps more than 20 years ago:

Furthermore, the corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988, that the MRGO threatened human life and yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued with the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Source: New Orleans-Area Residents 'Vindicated' by Katrina Ruling Against Army Corps of Engineers

I recall watching the post-Katrina wall-to-wall news coverage. Interview after interview featured residents saying that at least some of the worst of Katrina's destruction was the fault of engineering failures. Person after person voiced on camera that the Army Corps of Engineers had not been doing a good job.

Those comments were usually dismissed.

Now those voices have been heard. And we've discovered that they were right.