Orleans Levee Board

Prior to Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the OLB developed land and sold it to raise money to build and improve flood protection levees.

Owing to the 1965 legislation, the OLB's duties were limited to collecting the 30% cost share for project design and construction, and to maintaining and operating completed flood protection structures.

Nevertheless, the issue of whether the commissioners of the OLB Engineering Committee acted incompetently or negligently regarding the catastrophic flooding of August 2005 has not been conclusively demonstrated or proven.

Starting in the 1920s, the Board undertook a massive flood-protection initiative involving the construction of a stepped seawall several hundred feet north of a portion of the existing south shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

The intervening area was filled to several feet above sea level and was to serve as a "super levee" protecting the city from the Lake's storm surge.

Governor Jimmie Davis, in his second term from 1960 to 1964, named the New Orleans attorney Gerald J. Gallinghouse as the president of the levee board.

The OLB became the local sponsor, and its duties regarding flood protection were now limited to collecting 30% cost-share for project design and construction and maintaining the completed structures.

The flood is believed to have directly caused over 1,400 deaths; destroyed or severely damaged homes, businesses, and property in the majority of the city.

[9] As revealed in an August 2015 article[10] in the official journal of the World Water Council, the story is untrue, and responsibility for the levee failures belongs to the corps.

[11] During a special session of the Louisiana Legislature, a bill submitted by Sen. Walter Boasso (D-Arabi) was passed into law, which consolidated the levee boards of various parishes within Greater New Orleans.

[12] Investigative studies completed after the legislation's passage revealed no causal link between the pre-Katrina levee districts and the flooding.

[13] The most recent article about the breach event, published in 2015 by Water Policy, the official journal of the World Water Council concluded: "...we have not uncovered any information that would suggest that the members of the OLB who served on the Engineering Committee or the OLD staff engineers behaved irresponsibly or in a manner that did not place the interests of the city residents at the forefront."