Katrina: The Jury Answers

by Don Wittig

  “All true. Ultimately the Corps is at the mercy of Congress, and Congress is at the mercy of special interests.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Lewis. I could not have said it better myself. Pass the witness.”

  “Good place to stop for the day.” Judge Martin was tired and ready to head home. “We’ll see you all tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp. Remember the court’s instructions.” The jury was dismissed and the judge made his way for the exit.

  20 The Other Corps

  J UDGE MARTIN NEGOTIATED HIS WAY down one of the secure internal court elevators reserved for the judges and US marshals. He marched to the guarded underground parking lot and released the double security lock on his two-year-old Suburban. He climb aboard his three-hundred horses and turned out in front of the courthouse, where he spotted the melee. The press corps was out in force. From his safe distance, he could see O’Reilly and Deerman holding forth on one corner of the courthouse steps; Mack was at the other corner. Looked like O’Reilly had the larger crowd. Not surprising, he thought. There’s still an awful lot of anger, and so much misinformation continues to float around this town. Judge Martin hurried home to his wife, Lindsay.

  Lindsay was still a beautiful woman with thick, chestnut hair, even as she approached her sixty-third summer. It took a tough red head to stand up to the federal judge. Lindsay filled the bill and then some. Lindsay greeted her husband at the door with a kiss. “How goes the trial of the century?”

  The judge warmly returned her kiss and headed for his chilled martini glass. “Do we have any more Tito’s vodka cold?”

  “That’s your department,” Lindsay responded, amused. “You didn’t answer my question, dear.”

  “I’m thinking. I’m a little concerned about the press stirring things up to a heated pitch. Both attorneys and Bob Deerman were outside the courthouse holding press conferences. There must have been twenty-five or thirty press crews there including all the local stations from around the state. You know I have only allowed TV cameras in the courtroom a few times. In hindsight I made the right decision to keep them out this time too.”

  “You always make the right decision. After all, you married me, didn’t you?” Lindsay said sweetly, and Jeffrey let go his most gracious smile.

  “The trial is going well, as far as timing is concerned. I gave them a week. With the pace we are on, we should make it. The lawyers are all five star and real pros. They know just how far they can push me and usually don’t get too close to the line. Dr. Lewis makes a great witness, and O’Reilly guides her with a smooth touch. Mack sometimes lets his Dallas-New York slashing tactics get the better of him. But he’s damn good too and scored a lotta points this afternoon.

  “Still, I can’t read this jury like I usually can. We don’t really know how Katrina actually affected our jury. We got rid of the real bleeding hearts and the stone hearts. So it really comes down to whether the jury can put their biases and prejudices aside and be objective. That’s why I had to scold O’Reilly for having his witness blurt out that the Katrina mess was a man-made disaster. My instincts were proven right. All of a sudden there was a lot of new interest in my trial. The press was swarming.”

  “I know, dear. It’s been on KWHO-TV all day. They reported some Corps of Engineer major was dumping on the Corps and calling Katrina ‘a man-made disaster caused by the Corps!’ Did she actually say that?”

  “Pretty close and a lot more. She strikes me as very honest and straightforward, typical engineer, but well-spoken. She conceded quite a bit to Mack. I think the jury will find her very credible.

  “You know how the press likes to keep things stirred up. I just heard an old rumor the other day that some people in New Orleans still believe the government intentionally flooded part of the city to save the Quarter and some of the nicer neighborhoods. You know what, that probably goes back to Hurricane Betsy. With Betsy they actually did flood parts of the area to save other parts. Of course, that is no different than opening the floodgates of a dam. You know people downstream will pay for it. Remember the great San Antonio flood of 1998? Same thing happened there. Some people just like conspiracy theories.

  “We could be sitting on a powder keg. A lot of the people in this town are still mighty upset. I don’t want to see anything like what happened right after Katrina. The winds, they are a-blowin. Remind me to call Abner Trahan over at the Times. Maybe the paper can place some well-chosen, calming words.”

  21 The Lewis Letter

  “Y OU MAY PROCEED MR. O’REILLY.” Judge Martin flashed an elegant, tactful, good-morning smile. Martin was both experienced and clever in controlling the mood and atmosphere of his courtroom. He had learned after a few short years on the bench that the mood of the courtroom was largely controlled by the affect of the judge. Martin used his acquired people skills effectively and judiciously.

  “May it please the court. We have a few more questions of Dr. Lewis.”

  Lewis stood erect and marched back to the witness stand.

  O’Reilly, perhaps mocking Mack, went to the dais with a single piece of paper held at head level. “Dr. Lewis, let me take you back to January 1999. Let me read from exhibit number two hundred and ninety-eight. In that exhibit we have a letter to the head of the Army Corps of Engineers in Washington, DC. It is dated January tenth, 1999, and stated as personal and confidential. I quote:

  Dear General Walker: It grieves me to once again write you regarding my continued concerns about the New Orleans levees. I am especially concerned about the Orleans Canal, near its intersection with Smith. You will recall we deferred to the wishes of Commissioner Landry because of his close ties with Senator Boudreaux. Landry saw to it that his

  KATRINA: THE JURY ANSWERS brother-in-law, Jay Chiasson, got the contract to add six feet to the top of the levee for over one mile to make it category three certified. I will not embarrass anyone with the sordid details of what happened to the construction money. My sole concern is for the structural integrity of that section of the canal. We all know it cannot possibly stand a cat two surge, much less a cat three. Please, we must get Congress to look at this project again and get it fixed—and I mean before it is too late. This time we need a reputable construction firm to do the work.

  Respectfully submitted, /s

  Major Melinda Lewis

  “Did I read that correctly?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Just a couple of questions. First, you have always sought what

  is best for the Corps and what is best for the country and its citizens, have you not?”

  “Of course.”

  “Push comes to shove, if you were forced to choose between what is best for the environment and the country or the Corps of Engineers, which would it be?”

  “Neither. Honesty and integrity always come first. I cannot imagine a situation in which I would have to choose one over the other.”

  “Nothing further, your honor. Pass the witness.”

  Mack stood and smiled broadly to the jury. “Just one question, your honor. Ms. Lewis, in your now-famous January letter, you don’t mention one word about global warming, do you?”

  Lewis began to answer but Mack cut her off. “No further questions, your honor.”

  Judge Martin queried, “May the witness be excused?”

  Mack replied to the judge that he did not wish to excuse Ms. Lewis because he might recall her as a witness. Lewis fired a laser look at Mack. He parried the gaze for a split second, smiled, and sat down.

  O’Reilly let the global warming shot go, knowing what he had in store next for Mack and the jury.

  22 The Wetlands

  “WE NOW CALL DR. CROW BROUSSARD. Please state you name, education, and occupation for the record.” O’Reilly was particularly grateful that Greenpreserve’s lawyer came up with this incredible expert. And he was a native of the area.

  “My name is Crow Broussard. I have a PhD in geohydrophysics and currently teach at Louisiana State University. I am also a member of the
Katrina Recovery Review Force.”

  “Dr. Broussard, both as a professor at LSU and a member of the Katrina Recovery investigative team, have you had occasion to study the interrelationship between our Gulf Coast ecology and tropical storms?”

  “Yes. In the past year and a half, I spent hundreds of hours studying the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline and how it was impacted by Katrina. I have been a lifelong student of the environment and specifically the coastline since I grew up in the Houma Nation near Montegut. Yes, I know something about the great waters.”

  “Dr. Broussard, will you give us a little background about coastal marshlands and barrier islands?”

  “My forefathers would not have settled on the Gulf Coast without the protection and food source of the wetlands. The Louisiana delta is basically one big marsh, and a river runs through it. One writer, Burke, I believe, said New Orleans was ‘an insane asylum built on top of a sponge.’ There are a lot of crazy people here and a

  DON WITTIG KATRINA: THE JURY ANSWERS lotta good people. But I like the idea of the sponge. We have a boggy, wet, spongy soil all along the coast. The soil sinks a little every year. “When the mighty river was free to run its course, millions of cubic yards of silt and rich topsoil would spill over the river basin. This rich soil and even plain dirt would help maintain the balance of nature. The delta was replenished. Then came the crush of all colors of immigrants. They demanded that the government stop nature from flooding. So the Corps of Engineers started messing with the river, at least as far back as 1886. After the Great Flood of 1927, the scalpels of engineers began scarring and scraping our sponge with dams, dikes, levees, floodgates, construction, diversions, and dredging. The mighty river was shoved to the east, then the west, and then back again. In the meantime, people started moving into the wetlands, killing both feathered fowl and warm-blooded....”

  “Objection. Nonresponsive.” “Sustained. Dr. Broussard, please confine yourself to the question.”

  “Yes sir. The river was captured and made to live in the confines of man-made concrete, not unlike many of my brothers in Oklahoma and Arizona today. So the earth continued to sink and made to starve. As the land starved, a sea of salt began to creep in upon the marsh and claim more and more for herself. Tidelands were flooded not by the river but by the sea and lost. So you see, the Gulf of Mexico is taking over for the freshwater of the mighty river. Humans cannot order nature to do the unnatural.”

  “As I understand, Dr. Broussard, the tidal marshes are retreating in face of the advancing ocean. Is this what we call subsidence?”

  “Partially correct. You can have subsidence, like what happens in Houston when ground water, oil, or anything else is pumped out and nothing is pumped in. We have natural subsidence in the Mississippi delta simply because there is no rock or other structure to support the spongy soils and sub-delta marsh that predominate this area. The subsurface water is not stationary so you have dynamic hydro forces with the net effect of sinking soil, which we call subsidence. If there are no barriers for the subsiding areas, then yes, the salt water from the Gulf of Mexico will penetrate farther inland. Subsidence makes tidal flooding worse.”

  “Dr. Broussard, what has been the effect of Mr. Go?”

  “Mr. Go has been an environmental disaster. It has had devastating effects on Orleans Parish, St. Bernard Parish, and Plaquemines Parish. If I may, the project started in 1956 and finished about 1965. The engineering called for a six hundred and fifty-foot-wide canal, thirty-six-feet deep, and five hundred-feet wide at the bottom. The sides of the canal were supposed to be twenty-five degrees–way too steep. Unlike the Mississippi, this man-made ditch has no freshwater current coming down to keep it open. So the bottom silts up and the sides cave in. Much of the ditch is now two thousand-feet wide.

  “This ditch continues to destroy the wetlands. After construction started, in 1960 the salinity content at Shell Beach was three and a half pt, that’s parts per thousand, measured in grams per liter. A few years later after the canal went through, the salinity content jumped to twelve pt.

  “The Corps dredged through forty miles of virgin wetlands in St. Bernard Parish.” Broussard shook his head from side to side and looked down. He bravely fought off the welling tears in his own eyes. O’Reilly jumped up and asked for and received a brief recess. Broussard is great, the master opined to himself.

  2 O’Reilly resumed the story. “Dr. Broussard, you indicated that the Corps dredged through forty miles of virgin wetlands, please continue.”

  “The Corps itself estimated the loss of fresh to brackish wetlands at about eleven thousand acres. We lost fifteen hundred acres of cypress marsh. We also lost over nineteen thousand acres of brackish marsh to saline marsh. What I am trying to say is that this dredging softens and shrinks our wall of protection. Estuaries are destroyed or reduced. While the Corps is building more levees, they are destroying our hurricane protection at the same time.”

  “Why do you say the Corps is destroying our hurricane protection?”

  “Because they created man-made erosion and man-made destruction!” Broussard’s eyes flared with a passionate fire.

  In a nanosecond O’Reilly calculated this to be the precise moment to turn the son of a chief loose. “Pass the witness.”

  23 The Tears Dry

  M ACK STOOD TO THE CHALLENGE. “Dr. Broussard, are you saying that another twenty or thirty thousand acres of wetlands would have prevented the flooding of the Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama coasts?”

  “Of course not, but....”

  “Please just answer my question, Dr. Broussard.”

  O’Reilly had set the trap and Mack stepped into it. “Objection

  your honor. May the witness be allowed to fully answer the question?” “Sustained. The witness may complete his answer.” Judge Martin furrowed his brow. He sensed his ruling was marginal, and he may have opened Pandora’s box.

  He had.

  Broussard relished his moment. “First, Mr. Go is only the tip of the iceberg. A few thousand acres of wetlands will not even slow a hurricane like Katrina. The trouble is Louisiana is losing twenty-five to thirty-five square miles of wetlands every year. We have already lost over forty-six percent of our wetlands. We have only eight-point-eight million acres left. The policies of the Corps over the past forty years have reduced our hurricane barriers, not enhanced them.”

  “Now, Dr. Broussard, that’s not fair. Much of the loss of wetlands has been due to the increase of farming and population growth, has it not?”

  “True.”

  “More importantly, Dr. Broussard, the track of Katrina took her seventy miles east of New Orleans and away from the southern and western wetlands. So the presence or absence of wetlands was not the principal cause of the flooding. True?”

  “Yes, but....”

  “Nothing further, pass the witness.” Mack had to end this passionate earth man’s expose. He could easily see the more questions he asked, the deeper into the swamp he would wallow. For his part, O’Reilly knew the judge would not sustain the same objection to allow Broussard to ramble on. Both sides were happy with what they got, or didn’t get, from Crow Broussard. Broussard stepped from the witness stand and flashed a giant grin to the jury for the first time.

  24 Bob Deerman

  M ELINDA LEWIS EXHALED AND SOFTENED her erect posture. She allowed her shoulders to slump over her elbows on the counsel table. Bob was being called to the stand to talk about the environment and global warming. She watched as he walked to the witness stand, her face almost imperceptibly showing traces of the heat she felt. There was a meteoric moment one night many moons ago. The heat she now felt was like that on a little girl’s face when her mother catches her smooching on the living room sofa. It’s the embarrassment of being caught, not the heat of passion. Can’t believe I let myself slip that one time, she thought to herself, worried about the potential consequences. I risked a wonderful marriage to a fine man all because of ‘just one more drink.’ Never
, never again. And John took it so well when I had to tell him before the trial. We had another ‘man-made disaster’ in the making. More like man-and-woman-made disaster. Damn it, Melinda. You knew better. Now sit still and suffer and see how far Mack will press his advantage.

  “Please state your name, occupation, and educational background.”

  “Good morning. My name is Bob Deerman. I am the executive director of the Sahara Club and have been for ten years. I received my BS cum laude from Stanford, double major in biology and physics. My master’s was in climatological meteorology, and my PhD is from Texas A&M in evolutionary geo-climatology.”

  “Dr. Deerman, you also represent one of the complainants, the Sahara Club. I am sure the ladies and gentlemen of the jury want to know why did the Sahara Club join in this lawsuit.”

  “The Sahara Club is dedicated to the proposition that humankind can and should live in harmony with nature and the environment. We are a not-for-profit organization that spends its time, talent, and resources to educate the public and politicians about the extreme dangers facing our planet today. We believe in conservation. We believe that government has a big role in improving the environment and repairing scars of past abuse. When Washington contrives an ignorant policy, which it often does, that will hasten the demise of the earth as we know it. We see this case as a means to dispel some of the ignorance concerning ecological balances. We also believe this lawsuit could help shape the government’s role and the Army Corps of Engineers’ role in preserving and improving our environment.”

  “I am sure the jury is also curious what your organization would do with its share of any judgment that it might receive, if the jury so finds.” O’Reilly sought to stealthily preempt Mack’s inevitable questions about money. The jury would be curious. He knew that jurors are often swayed by a perception of greed. Greed represented the heart and soul of the tort-reformers mantra.