Two weeks before the start of another predicted busy hurricane season the Mississippi Valley Division commander said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is prepared.

Brig. Gen. Robert Crear of Vicksburg led a conference call with top members of his staff from along the Mississippi River from the division’s Walnut Street headquarters Wednesday.

&#8220We’re prepared,” Crear said at the end of the 4 1/2-hour call with the commanding officers of the MVD’s districts based in St. Paul, Minn.; Rock Island, Ill.; St. Louis, Mo.; Memphis; Vicksburg and New Orleans and other key members of his staff.

The Corps’ plan called for pre-Hurricane Katrina levels of protection to be restored by June 1, the start of the first hurricane season following Katrina.

Most of New Orleans was flooded after Katrina struck Aug. 29 and canal walls were breached. And much of the area that was flooded then was reflooded after Hurricane Rita struck on Sept. 24.

Since then, the Corps group that was tasked with restoring the system’s capacity to at least its pre-Katrina level, Task Force Guardian, has done &#8220an unprecedented amount of work,” Crear said.

&#8220They’ve been working seven days a week, 24-hour shifts,” to complete the job, Crear said of the Corps and its contractors on Task Force Guardian.

Three gated structures that are to be put in place at mouths of New Orleans canals to allow for greater protection against any future storm surge are also to be in place within weeks, Crear said. Some repair of &#8220scouring” that was caused by water that flowed over levees or walls will also remain to be done after the June 1 target date, Task Force Guardian spokesman Jim Taylor said.

Task Force Guardian will be succeeded by a more-permanent unit called the Hurricane Protection Office, Crear said. That New Orleans-based office will be tasked over the next one to two years with about $2 billion in work, making it in itself about the size of one of the Corps’ current districts, Crear said.

Work over the next few months will also include reviewing parts of New Orleans’ flood-protection system that did not fail.

&#8220Some were severely stressed and may need work,” Taylor said.

A third phase of the project will be a long-term effort to increase flood-protection to a much higher level, Taylor said.

&#8220In the fall of 2007 we will send an analysis of the system to Congress so Congress can decide what’s next,” Taylor said.

The agenda for Wednesday’s call listed 56 questions addressing a wide range of issues.

After Crear said the Corps has completed its missions to provide ice, water, temporary housing, public facilities and roofing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Debris-removal continues but by the end of this month about 20 million cubic yards of debris is expected to have been removed from the Coast, Crear added.