Just to summarize, my personal goal coming out of this hearing, which I think is shared by Senator Landrieu and Chair Boxer, is to first urge the Corps again to reconsider their position on authorization of 2 versus 1.

Everyone in the State unanimously is with this.

So, just to underscore this, where the canal walls breached have been replaced with a whole new design. Correct?

So again, under Option 1, that would not change. Under Option 2, it would completely change for the better.

But my point is, if under Option 1 you cannot allow the water to get past 6 feet, you are giving up a lot of safe storage between 6 feet and 12.5 feet, which we thought we had, which the system was designed to include?

I guess one of the points I am trying to make is that the Corps will say, well, under Option 1 we are going to match at the lake the pumping capacity that the city has in the center of the city.

I strongly believe that one of the problems is that in the past there has not been enough common work and coordination among multiple involved agencies.

By definition, virtually every one of those folks were hard hit by a hurricane.

You are just fixing the same system that broke in the first place.

This is the authorization language to do the permanent fix.

OK. So, under Option 1, the solution is to lower the water level allowed in the canal to a lower 'safe water level.' Is that right?

So, wherever there is not a breach, which is 99 percent of the walls we are talking about, there is the same old faulty design that led to the breaches.

Well, my understanding is that, even with everything that's been done, and funding commitments for CPSC to focus on this immediately, it's going to be a matter of many, many months, which strikes me as really frustrating and inadequate.

$15 million to do a study?

What comfort does that give the people of our region, that there will be no catastrophic flooding in someone's lifetime?

It is only going to be a matter of time until a major storm hits Florida or some catastrophic flooding occurs in California.

$40 billion worth of damage caused by the failure of this system.

With the canals closed under this plan and a storm sitting over the city dropping heavy rainfall, Orleans and Jefferson, which is about 1 million people roughly, close to 1 million people, are at risk of catastrophic flooding not from the…