LaPLACE, La. – At the urging of residents who have long felt forgotten in the shadow of more densely populated New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers says it will look into whether the city’s fortified defenses pushed floodwaters into outlying areas.

However, the Corps has said it’s unlikely scientific analysis will confirm that theory suggested not only by locals, but by some of the state’s most powerful politicians. Instead, weather experts say a unique set of circumstances about the storm – not the floodwalls surrounding the New Orleans metro area – had more to do with flooding neighborhoods that in recent years have never been under water because of storm surge.

Isaac was a large, slow-moving storm that wobbled across the state’s coast for about two and a half days, pumping water into back bays and lakes and leaving thousands of residents under water outside the massive levee system protecting metropolitan New Orleans. It was blamed for seven deaths and damaged thousands of homes on the Gulf Coast.