The West Bank project is one of two the corps is building to protect New Orleans, the other being a similar storm surge barrier on the East Bank that closes off the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal.

MSNBC notes that with large areas of the West Bank undeveloped pasture, woods, and wetlands, the improved levee system will spur development, especially since most of the East Bank is crammed with houses and businesses. “It’s the only land left for large populations to grow,” said state Rep. Ricky J. Templet, a Republican who represents a swath of the West Bank. “The sky’s the limit. On the West Bank, we were the last to get started on our flood protection. Some people will be able to sleep at night now.”

They should not sleep too soundly, according to Robert Bea, a civil engineer with the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on the New Orleans levee system. Bea called the West Bank project an example of the corps’ flawed levee building policies, designed to handle a 100-year storm rather than shelter the area for many centuries like dikes in the Netherlands.

Bea’s advice to West Bank developers and homeowners: “Build high, build strong because the level of protection is not sufficient to build low and weak.”

If anything, though, building requirements will get more lax after the levee system is finished. Tom Rodrigue, the flood plain manager for Jefferson Parish, said developers most likely would wait for the levees to be certified as acceptable by the Federal Emergency Management Agency before building. FEMA certification opens the door for cheaper flood insurance and building lower to the ground.

The Army Corps is not fazed by the potential for development in this vulnerable area.
“People tend to build and live around the coastal landscape, and that’s a natural thing for Southeast Louisiana regardless of whether you have the risk reduction in place or not,” said Tom Podany, the chief of the corps’ Protection and Restoration Office in New Orleans. “What (the levee system) does is recognize that’s going to happen and provide for a way to increase their safety.”

Counting the West Closure Structure, the corps is pouring more than $2 billion into finishing the long-overdue levee system on the West Bank. The agency now says it plans to have most of the West Bank hurricane protection done by 2011.

“On the East Bank, they had a complete system that failed. On the West Bank, we didn’t have a complete system to fail,” said Jerry Spohrer, a levee manager on the West Bank. By 2011, he said, “we should be buttoned up pretty tight — the first time on the West Bank, which is amazing.”