NEW ORLEANS -- It's righteously hot at the beginning of June, a time for this area to take an involuntary intake of breath, if not a full-on gasp, before getting on with finding some shade. June 1 is the official start of the hurricane season. No whistles blow, no bands play, but the news media are full of stories about the onset of "that time of year." I've just finished taking a ride on a stretch of road that brings back memories of a previous hurricane season: the so-called "twin spans" of I-10 across Lake Pontchartrain, which were shattered and scattered like the toys of an angry child during the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina, are still, just now, undergoing the finishing touches of rebuilding.
This is a notable start of hurricane season for another reason. June 1 was the Corps of Engineers' self-imposed deadline for the completion, in name if not in fact, of their renamed Hurricane Risk Reduction System (the previous name, the Hurricane Protection System, was too ironic for the Corps, given the ghastly failures of that system during Katrina). Parts of the system are yet to be completed, or started, but the Corps is proud to say, in press release and soundbite alike, that "New Orleans has never been safer." Coming from an agency which, according to two independent forensic investigative reports (ILIT from UC Berkeley and Team Louisiana from LSU), bore primary responsibility for the death and devastation in 2005 that nearly drowned this metropolitan area, that's mild reassurance indeed. The conclusions of those two reports share an interesting distinction: both were never publicly rebutted in detail and both were widely ignored by the national news media.
So, how safe is New Orleans? John Barry, author of Rising Tide and a member of the East Bank Levee Authority (there's one for each side of the Mississippi River), zeroes in on the central fact of the "100-year protection" project for which the Congress has given the Corps somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion so far, with more to come:
But 100-year protection for a major city is the lowest standard of protection in the developed world. The Dutch and Japanese protect urban areas against a so-called 10,000-year flood. So our 100-year protection is not exactly something to brag about.
One other fact as we crank up the air conditioning and celebrate the achievements of an agency whose previous failure here was not followed by a single instance of punishment, sanction, or disincentive for future failure. Take the Corps at its word, for a moment, if you dare. The hydraulic pumps installed at the three places where canals empty into Lake Ponch are temporary, says the Corps, with about a five-year lifespan. (This conflicts with documentation we've found and displayed in my film about the subject, in which the Corps originally projected a 50-year lifespan for the pumps, before a Corps engineer reported that the devices in question repeatedly failed their testing, after which they were installed anyway. But we're taking the Corps at their word, remember.) Those temporary pumps have now been in place since June 1, 2006. That means, as of now, protective structures with a five-year life span are in year six.
If, like the Corps, you thought your pumps were temporary and life-limited, you'd want to be letting the contract for the replacement, permanent, this-time-we-really-mean-50-year-lifespan pumps before, say, now. But that's why you're not the Corps. The agency just announced the awarding of that contract in April, and it estimates the project will be completed in three years.
Of course, if the Corps' estimates of project completion were always correct, the Hurricane Protection System that failed in 2005, and had not yet been completed even then, would have been up and running by the mid-1970s.
But again, let's take them at their word. By the Corps' own estimate, pumps with a five-year lifespan will have been a crucial part of what keeps New Orleans from flooding again for nine years.
Just keep repeating: Never. Been. Safer.
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http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2011/06/west_bank_levee_work_faulted_f.html
"“If they’ve got a 200-pound log buried in that levee, it makes you wonder what else is buried there,” said Giuseppe Miserendino, the levee authority’s regional director. “How does your quality-control person miss something that big? What else didn’t they catch?”"
"the Metairie Pumping Station, astride the canal had 15 pumps capable of moving over six billion gallons of water a day through the station." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th_Street_Canal#Improved_drainage_with_pumping_stations
BTW, see David Vitters cross-exam of the Corps' Gen. Walsh in my film "The Big Uneasy". This is not a partisan issue.
So it goes.
Why isn't a real engineering company building the levies in New Orleans?
http://www.usace.army.mil/about/Pages/Home.aspx
I doubt they are the laziest, most inept people in the entire world. Finding those people would require too much effort. So, I'm sure there are many lazier, more inept people who are not employed by the Corps.
As for the levees in New Orleans, they are designed by "contractors." That is the term the Federal aquisition process uses for what other people call consultants. They are professional engineering companies who are selected based on their "qualifications," which usually means they have a "relationship" with the Corps. Attach your own interpretation to that term.
The levees are built by contractors of the sort you see building highways and other public works. They are generally selected according to the lowest bid process familiar to most people.
They are all immune to the sort of liability that attaches to most other engineering works in the country.
It's all part and parcel of the anti-government regulation, anti-government oversight,
government-is-the-problem approach. This view is held by some despite all evidence that such an approach leads to such disasters as you describe. And speaking of disasters, BP's disastrous oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico last year was undoubtably largely due to lax government oversight and regulation
of the oil companies. You've written in these pages about that as well. I responded to your article at the time. I mentioned that I had written a song about it called Special Place.
Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMvPDK8oJBk
My YouTube channel is maesthetician. My website for donations is www.maesthetician.com.
I say reelect President Obama, give him bulletproof, filibuster-proof Democratic majorities
in both houses of Congress, then hold their feet to the fire like nobody's business.
Let's restore (or begin) a higher level of competence to government.
May New Orleans be successfully restored.
Please forgive the shameless plugs.
Bush provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans— a mere sliver of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Bush knew SELA needed $80 million to keep working, he knew how critical the project was and how disastrous it would be if the levees failed, but the he cut it anyway. The levee failed, because that section went uninspected and unrepaired.
It's not partisan to observe that the mindset that is opposed to government regulation
in general is more closely identified with the Republicans, don't you think?
That's more than a clue and explains quite a bit. No, I have not seen your movie yet. I will I will.
Next question - is there any hope in instilling some system with accountability and incentives that match the goals of the people being served by the corps? For example, a new incentive might be something like... hmmm, how about this - don't destroy our homes.
Speaking of failures and their consequences, how do things stand in the area concerning the BP oil spill? We in the rest of the country, keep seeing the commercials BP puts out talking about how responsible they've been and how "back to normal" things are getting there.
While I certainly hope that has been and is the case, what is your assessment? New Orleans issues have a habit, as you well know, of being ignored by the national media after times of crisis.
1. Correctly built floodwalls.
2. MR GO filled in--or preferably, following the advice of experts, never built.
That's it. Even one of them would have cut the damage in half. Both and no flood. Period. Voila.
Surface and subsurface data strongly indicate that the rapid subsidence and associated wetland
loss were largely induced by extraction of hydrocarbons and associated formation water"
http://www.bergan.com/Downloads/MortEtal.pdf
http://www.aegweb.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4076 Extraction is generally recognized as causing subsidence.