Another take:

Rich,
As a degreed Mechanical Engineer (with very limited experience in
hydrology, I’d be the first to admit), I was disappointed by how slow
the repair process was, specifically regarding the 17th Street Canal
levee. It seems to me that the attempts to re-establish the levee at the
break point were misguided at best: the gap is large, the levee
underneath eroding, and unstable. It seemed to me a far more obvious
solution was to use the Hammond Highway bridge (a newly constructed
bridge just north of the levee break) as a logicalt area to establish a
cofferdam. Then, once water flow over the broken section of the levee
was stopped, re-establish the levee, and then start pumping out. The
bridge provides a hard point for landing supplies, is accessible from
Lake Ponchartrain (esp. via barges, which could carry large volumes of
materials and equipment). This could have been done relatively easily as
opposed to trying to establish a new levee section in rushing water. The
only disadvantage that I could see would have been that the cofferdam
would then have to be removed once the original levee was reestablished,
but that’s a minor problem given the level of flooding that ensued
during the feeble attempts to plug the levee itself. Interestingly, from
the limited photos I’ve seen, it seems that two cranes are now on the
bridge. Wonder what’s next in the minds of the engineers on site?