Photos: Engineering New Orleans, post-Katrina

As part of Road Trip 2008, CNET News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman has been traveling around the South writing stories and producing photo galleries about a wide variety of different destinations and attractions.

Recently, he stopped in New Orleans. First, he wrote about the fact that the city still has many areas that are far from recovery, nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina.

But even as some parts of the Crescent City are still suffering, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is putting a great deal of money and effort into new hurricane protection systems that it hopes can reduce the risk of catastrophic flooding in the future.

This is one part of that larger protection system, a huge new gate built in 2006 at the mouth of New Orleans' 17th Street Canal--which breached during Katrina, severely flooding the surrounding areas. This large gate is made up of 11 smaller gates that can be dropped down to help prevent a storm surge from pushing its way into the canal. The system also has giant pumps that are designed to push back out any water that does make it through, either by overtopping the gate, or from torrential rain.

The Corps of Engineers, stung by scathing criticism of its preparedness before Katrina, is now cautioning residents of New Orleans that it can reduce the risk of future disaster, but that nothing can eliminate it altogether.

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