By Larry O'Hanlon

One of the greatest gambles in American history started in the year 1965. That's when the Army Corps of Engineers was given 50 years to complete almost 20-foot-high Category 3 hurricane-rated levees along miles of shipping canals and the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Since then, for 40 hurricane seasons, New Orleans has put it all on the line, rolled the dice and prayed that the Big One wouldn't hit.

Of course, it was no secret back in '65 that the city really needed Category 5 protection, or that 50 years was an awfully long time to shoot craps with an entire city.

"The levees could have been higher, for Category 5," said engineer Joseph Suhayda, a New Orleans hydraulics expert at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. But the plans were driven by budgets, he said, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) just wasn't given the resources.

That was then, and this is the post-Katrina now. "What we have to do now is commit to a Category 5 and put aside the benefits and costs analyses," said Suhayda.

And so just weeks after the catastrophic end of New Orleans' 39-year winning streak, government and university academic engineers have put together an array of mega-projects that ask for nothing less than the full protection that was needed all along — ASAP.

NEXT: Moving the Battle