I'm looking for articles that warned the govt that the NO levees were weak

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

To determine exactly where and how high to build these levees, the engineers have enlisted the aid of a 3-D computer-simulation program called ADCIRC (Advanced Circulation Model). ADCIRC incorporates dozens of data points—including seabed and coastal topography, wind speed, tidal variation, ocean depth and water temperature—and charts a precise map of where the storm surge would inundate New Orleans. The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.

Storm Flooding of the East Bank (including downtown New Orleans)

If a hurricane approaches New Orleans from any number of tracks from the south or southeast, water will be pushed from the Gulf of Mexico into Mississippi Sound, Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain. A FEMA storm surge model, NOAA's SLOSH model, and now ADCIRC experimental storm surge models based on the most recent levee heights and detailed land elevation data for southern Louisiana, have verified that a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane or greater of these tracks have the potential to flood the New Orleans "bowl." This will happen as water piles up against the southern levees of Lake Pontchartrain and spills into New Orleans from the east and west ends of the city. These floodwaters are anticipated to traverse highly industrialized areas such as the Norco facility in Kenner, and areas north of the Industrial Canal, contaminating floodwaters - which have the potential to become hazardous or even flammable by floating diesel fuel, other flammable chemicals, and debris.

The model may not resolve a key question facing Corps investigators and other researchers -- how floodwall breaches formed. Corps officials say the canal floodwalls were probably overtopped and their structures eroded from the inside, but LSU researchers have cast doubt on that scenario, in part because some data indicate water wasn't high enough.

The model -- which does not render the landscape at scales of less than about 300 feet, about half the size of some breaches -- does not show water in canals overtopping levees. But it does show surge heights near the canals may have reached 12 feet or more -- which could have been enough to overtop levees or floodwalls, which are built to withstand a maximum surge of 11.5 feet.