Darren Austin stood atop a hulking wall at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain and watched the Seabrook Floodgate glide closed, the movement of the massive structure progressing so slowly that it was almost imperceptible.

As the head of operations at the South Louisiana Flood Authority-East, Austin's job Tuesday morning was to help the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ensure that the gate, a 600-foot-long, 16-foot high mass of concrete and steel, could do the job that engineers built it to accomplish in 2012: keeping hurricane storm surge out of the Industrial Canal and the vulnerable, low-lying New Orleans neighborhoods that surround it.

“I know this is boring but I like boring for something like this,” he said. “I don’t want this to be eventful.”

The inspection of the floodgate went off wi

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