Levee experts and the Army Corps of Engineers insist New Orleans is safer than before Katrina flooded more than 80 percent of the city in 2005. Experts estimate the system is only a third of the way to where the Army Corps wants it by 2011, which would protect it against a 100-year storm. The canals around New Orleans have been the cause of repeated flooding over the decades, and flood walls along it were breached during Hurricane Katrina. Levees protecting eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish are in many areas 10 feet lower than what the Army Corps would like them to be. The corps has been scrambling over the last two year to finish its work. But levees, flood walls and floodgates remain in various states of completion.