Slow Push to List Breach Sites Among Federal Icons Sites where levee failures led to the catastrophic flooding after Hurricane Katrina would join Civil War battlefields and Mount Rushmore on a federal list of the nation's historic icons if an activist has her way, but legal foot-dragging by the agency that many blame for the flooding is slowing the effort. "It was an event so catastrophic the whole world watched it on TV," Sandy Rosenthal said this week as she walked beside a repaired floodwall along the Lower 9th Ward, which was devastated in the storm's aftermath in 2005. It's the worst civil engineering disaster in U.S. history. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to sign off on the application for the National Register of Historic Places because it owns one of the sites. But the agency is still embroiled in a legal battle over responsibility and liability for the flooding, and there are concerns that approving the application would influence those cases. Several federal agencies are meeting next week to discuss the application, and a decision from the National Parks Service expected early next month could speed up the process. Rosenthal's effort is nearly two years in the making. The activist who lived in New Orleans at the time of Katrina is the founder and director of Levees.Org, a grassroots organization that formed after the storm and became a chief critic of the corps. The group began working in 2010 to have two breach sites - one at the Lower 9th Ward and another along a drainage canal at the Lakeview neighborhood - placed on the register. Levee breaches at numerous sites flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and swamped suburban areas. Flood water lifted some houses off foundations and reached the roof lines of others. Close to 2,000 deaths were blamed on the storm, many due to drowning. Stories and pictures of the tens of thousands of stranded people dominated media for days. Under normal circumstances, placement on the register is an arduous bureaucratic task requiring painstaking compilation of technical and historical information and approval from state authorities before it reaches the National Parks Service for consideration. Further complicating this effort is the involvement of the corps, which constructed the levees and floodwalls, and which owns the Lower 9th Ward site. Corps approval isn't essential to getting the designation, but owners must be given a voice in the decision. The corps' OK would speed the process. Corps officials have been hesitant to offer a view amid the litigation. The corps missed a late March deadline to approve, deny or seek changes in the application and issued a letter in April saying more time was needed for review by the Department of Justice and others. "It presents complex legal and policy considerations that must be fully evaluated by the Army attorneys, the DOJ, corps headquarters and my office," Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army, said in the letter. The agency also has said they want to ensure that placement on the register wouldn't impede any future modifications or repairs. Supporters of the recognition efforts counter that historical status wouldn't prevent changes that would protect public safety. Rosenthal is frustrated by the argument that the corps needs more time to consider the facts contained in the application. "There is absolutely nothing in our nomination that is not already public record," she said.