ISS - Mister GO goes to trial::snip::

""It's the most expensive catastrophe in United States history. And it's actually man made," Jonathan Andry, the plaintiffs' lawyer, told CBS News Monday.


In his opening comments, Judge Duval, who is hearing the case without a jury, also called the case "the first real trial" about Hurricane Katrina, the levees and the role of the federal government. "This is a significant case that could affect hundreds of thousands of people," Judge Duval said Monday. "You all know what this is about:...What did the Corps know, when did it know it, and when should it have known?"


The federally-funded MR-GO was dug into the swamps southeast of New Orleans in the 1960s as a shortcut between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. For years coastal advocates charged that the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies allowed energy companies to decimate Louisiana's coastal wetlands, the best buffers against hurricanes, with projects like MR-GO. Residents, environmentalists, civil rights groups and policy makers steadily argued for MR-GO's closure, as the channel continued to grow in size due to erosion, bringing with it daily tidal flows of salt water that killed wetlands, marsh and cypress swamp forests. Hurricane experts warned that the destruction of wetlands around MR-GO eliminated a key barrier to advancing storm surges, and that MR-GO's faulty design created a funnel effect, accelerating the force and strength of storm surges. But all these warnings went unheeded.


On Monday the plaintiff's expert on geology and the coastal environment, Sherwood M. Gagliano, testified that the channel was "one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the United States." According to the New York Times, Gagliano cited reports from as early as 1957 that claimed the canal would pose a danger to the people of St. Bernard Parish and reports of his own dating from 1972 that warned of the increased flooding risk from wetlands destruction. He also testified that the Corps was aware of such research and even prepared a report in 1988 that mentioned the possibility of catastrophic damage to urban areas from MR-GO. Despite such assessments, Gagliano explained that the Corps did little to reduce the risk.


Yet, the Corps has consistently argued that the canal's effect during Hurricane Katrina was insignificant. But at the direction of Congress, the Corps has begun to close the MR-GO canal using 434,000 tons of rock.""