Will Mr. Go stop the Trinity River toll road

A half century or so ago, Congress passed something called the River and Harbor Act of 1956 that authorized the construction of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal or, "Mr. Go," as it is referred to by the folks living in New Orleans. The purpose of the canal was to provide a more direct route from the inner harbor of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico than the winding, twisting Mississippi River. Construction was completed in 1965.

But things didn't go as planned. Erosion widened the canal from its original 650 feet to its present average width of 1,500 feet. Not only that, the canal is not even being used. On average, one ocean-going vessel a day uses the short cut, which costs $13 million a year to maintain. But that's not all.

Three months before Hurricane Katrina struck, Hassan Mashriqui, a storm surge expert at Louisiana State University called Mr. Go a "critical and fundamental flaw" in the hurricane defenses prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After Katrina struck, an engineering investigation and computer modeling revealed Mr. Go intensified the initial surge of water by 20 percent, raised the height of the wall of water by three feet and increased the velocity of the surge from three per second to eight feet per second. "Without MRGO, the flooding would have been a lot less," Mashriqui says. "The levees might have been overtopped, but they wouldn't have been washed away." Levees along Mr. Go were breached in 20 places along its length during Katrina, directly flooding most of Saint Bernard Parish and East New Orleans. The storm surge along Mr. Go is also said to be the cause of the three breaches in the Industrial Canal.

Here's where the plot thickens. It's almost impossible to sue the federal government over collapsing levees. Something called the Flood Control Act of 1928 prohibits suits against the United States for damages resulting from floods or flood waters. However, last month U.S. District Court Judge Stanley R. Duval Jr., who ruled in January 2008 that the Corps of Engineers was immune in a federal lawsuit directly related to the levees and flood wall failures during Katrina, has now said he will hear a suit by property owners on the canal's contributions to the flooding. He based his decision on Graci v. United States, a 1971 ruling that said there is no immunity for flooding caused by a federal project unrelated to flood control. And Judge Duval ruled, Mr. Go was built for navigation, not for flood control.

Which brings me back to our local Trinity River toll road which is being built for transportation, not for flood control. We've already heard from the Corps that our levees are unacceptable. Using the Mr. Go precedent, couldn't the Corps consider the toll road a potential legal liability just waiting to happen? I know if I was an attorney advising the Corps, I would be hesitant in telling it to give an OK to the toll road inside the Trinity River levees.

Mr. Go, meanwhile, is coming to a stop. Late last year, the Corps began dumping rocks into the channel to permanently dam it. It is expected to be completely closed by this summer.