After a Rush, Pace of Levee Work Downshifts

For months, the Army Corps of Engineers raced through the city, frantically patching broken levees and building floodgates to prepare for a hurricane season, now ended, that produced no hurricanes here.

That repair work is essentially complete and the corps has moved on to the task of strengthening flood protection in New Orleans beyond its pre-Hurricane Katrina level, hoping to entice residents back. But lately the bulldozers have been idle, and the trucks motionless. The pace has slowed, those in the region say, with little trace of the round-the-clock frenzy of the first phase.



“We don’t see that anymore,” said Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the hurricane center at Louisiana State University.

Contractors are waiting impatiently for the chance to bid on jobs. “By now, I would have expected there to be many more jobs bid and under way,” said Robert Boh, the head of Boh Brothers, a major local contractor. “We’re going to dance as soon as anyone asks us.”

from the NY Times