apparent role in amplifying the impacts of storm surges. According to a congressional hearing statement made in late 2005 by Scott Faber of the Environmental Defense Fund, "Traffic on the MR-GO has fallen by more than 50 percent since 1986. Today, less than one oceangoing vessel per day, on average, uses this man-made short cut, which costs approximately $13 million annually to maintain. Like many waterways constructed by the Corps, the MR-GO failed to attract as much traffic as the Corps predicted when the project was constructed." Role in Hurricane Katrina disaster Levees along the MRGO and the Intracoastal Waterway were breached in approximately 20 places, directly flooding most of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans East. Storm surge from the MRGO is also a leading suspect in the three breaches of floodwalls along the Industrial Canal. Three months before Katrina, Hassan Mashriqui, a storm surge expert at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center, called MRGO a "critical and fundamental flaw" in the Corps' hurricane defenses, a "Trojan Horse" that could amplify storm surges 20 to 40 percent. Following the storm, an engineering investigation and computer modeling showed that the outlet intensified the initial surge by 20 percent, raised the height of the wall of water about three feet, and increased the velocity of the surge from to in the funnel-shaped region between the converging MRGO and Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Mashriqui believes this funnel effect contributed to the scouring that undermined the levees and floodwalls along the Gulf Outlet, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Industrial Canal. "Without MRGO, the flooding would have been much less," he said. "The levees might have [been] overtopped, but they wouldn't have been washed away." The Army Corps of Engineers disputes this causality and maintains Katrina would have overwhelmed the levees with or without the contributing effect of MRGO since the storm surge was perpendicular to the length of the canal. Katrina's passage caused extensive shoaling of the MRGO, resulting in its impassability for deep-draft oceangoing vessels. Officials of St. Bernard Parish immediately opposed its reopening. Maritime interests called for re-opening the Gulf Outlet but equipping it with protective floodgates, or accelerating construction of the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal lock project, which when completed would allow MRGO to be closed without affecting deep-draft commercial traffic. Closure In May 2007 the Corps of Engineers announced it would close the MRGO to all traffic and would build an