Since the beginning, the project has suffered delays and cost increase due to design change, environmental concerns, legal challenges, and local oppositions to the project. As a result, it has been40 years and the project is still not complete, estimate completion is 2015 and the approximate cost about 738 million (GAO, 2005). These same unfinished levees were supposed to provide protection to the citizens of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. .
Many critics, experts, and engineering companies are disgusted with the Corps engineering. O'Neil P. Malbrough, president of Shaw Coastal, an engineering firm, proclaimed, "That's inexcusable the Corps began building levees around New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain in 1965 if private enterprises were doing this, it would cost half the money and take half the time" (Fishcetti, 2006). They oppose the Corps in being in charge, they see the Corps as being to slow, too politicized by Congress, and unwilling to entertain novel technique approaches "I'm inclined to change horses" said Hassan S. Mashriqui, an assistant research professor at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center (Fishcetti, 2006). .
The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city form a storm greater that a category 3hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the wall (Glasser and Grunwald, 2005). The Hurricane Center's deputy director Ivor Heerden said the real scandal of Katrina is the "catastrophic structural failure" of barriers that should have handled the hurricane with ease (Glasser and Grunwald, 2005). Researchers have strong evidence that Katrina's surge from the north was 7 feet below the necessary height needed to overtop the 17th Street and London Avenue flood walls. .
It was the failure of these flood walls that allowed the rest of the lake to empty into the city (Glasser and Grunwald, 2005).