NEW ORLEANS – As a civil engineer for the Mississippi Valley Division, which is based in Vicksburg, John Ashley has a comfortable office in the MVD’s stately old downtown building overlooking the Yazoo Diversion Canal.

As a key Corps of Engineers employee in long-range flood-control planning for New Orleans, he has a cubicle.

That, however, is probably better than what he had in Iraq, where he served three tours.

&#8220I love it,” he said. &#8220Let me tell you why. I like to be where the action is.”

Ashley said he’s patient and realizes there are many ideas about what steps should be taken to assure New Orleans is better protected from storms than on Aug. 29, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina struck and inundated 80 percent of the area.

&#8220Interim solutions are in place,” he said. &#8220We want to get it right this time and it takes time to do it right.” But there is progress, measurable progress, every day.

The design is not complete, but the goal is to reach a completion point in four years. What it involves – coastal restoration and other methods of passive protection or higher levees, more pumps and control structures or both – has yet to be decided.

Joe Hendrix’s Vicksburg home is on Glenwood Circle and his New Orleans &#8220home” is also in the sprawling New Orleans District headquarters.

His role is working to develop cost management measures that will serve as the guideposts for the flood-protection project.

In something of an unusual move, the Corps of Engineers has hired a Georgia firm to provide an independent technical review of its proposals. That adds layers, but also helps assure contractor prices are in line with national models.

&#82202011 is a very ambitious goal,” Hendrix said. Along the way, Hendrix is part of a team that will work to reduce costs while keeping things moving.

&#8220We’re trying to keep this as a contingency, not letting it lapse into business as usual,” he said. &#8220I like seeing what we’re designing getting done. You can start things here and finish them.”

Missy Arnold of Vicksburg is now full time with the Hurricane Protection Office of the New Orleans District of the Army Corps of Engineers.

It was an affirmative decision, she said, to be part of history. &#8220I feel strongly about it,” she said. The HPO’s mission is forward-looking, taking a long-range, systemic approach to improving the area’s ability to withstand storms.

Arnold, who formerly worked at the Vicksburg District, is classed as a subject matter expert and trainer for disaster planning and response. She worked after hurricanes in Florida and was a member of the advance team positioning ice and water supplies before Katrina hit. She then worked the Mississippi Recovery Field Office. The same &#8220get it done” approach is part of life with HPO, she said.

&#8220It’s exciting because it’s fast-paced,” she said. &#8220I want to say that I was here and I was part of it.”

John Meador grew up in Vicksburg, graduated from Mississippi State University in hydraulics engineering and then went to work for the Vicksburg District from 1975 until 2001 when he went to Washington, D.C., as a Corps coordinator with the new Department of Homeland Security.

As Katrina approached, so did his first grandchild – born in Ridgeland in the days before the storm swept inland. &#8220I experienced the storm there, and knew immediately there would be a Corps mission.”

After an initial role elsewhere, he went to New Orleans as deputy director of Task Force Hope, the first supplemental Corps entity created to &#8220dewater” and perform immediate relief. Task Force Hope lives on, and Meador said being a part of it is like nothing else.

&#8220What we’re working on is absolutely the greatest challenge in the civil works arena in national history,” he said.

Closer to the front lines are real estate specialists Eddie Milton and Ed Claypool, both also among dozens of people from this area serving in hurricane relief roles.

They start each day with lists of properties to check. They submit their findings, usually in batches of 15, to the next phase that, for almost 15,000 homes so far, has led to demolition either at government or private expense.

&#8220Several times we find furniture still there, things not touched by the flood and a truck still parked in the driveway,” Milton said. The people left and are apparently not coming back.

In other homes, Claypool said, the ceilings will be bowed toward the floor and a check in the attic will show silt and debris pressing down. &#8220That’s how deep the water was some places,” he said. &#8220It we put ourselves in the shoes of the people whose homes we are surveying, it’s very sad.”

&#8220Still,” Milton said, &#8220I think the rewarding aspects of what we’re doing outweigh the frustrations.”