Two new reports, two more confirmations that New Orleanians are not yet out of the federal woods. From the Corps of Engineers came a draft Environmental Impact Report which repeated the Corps' since-discredited (even by the Corps) explanation for the flooding of New Orleans:
A single sentence in the 158-page draft of Individual Environmental Report No. 2 says: "Heavy rains and overtopping of the Lake Pontchartrain levees resulted in flooding in the northernmost sections of the parish, and sections of 'Old Metairie' remained flooded for weeks."No mention is made of the catastrophic breaches of two New Orleans outfall canals, which independent forensic investigators largely blame for flooding not only the east bank of New Orleans but Old Metairie and Old Jefferson.
Those forensic investigators singled out design and construction flaws in the Corps-designed and constructed levee and floodwall system for the flooding. Odd the Corps wouldn't remember that, since its own 2006 report belatedly and partially confirmed those findings. Corps officials must have mislaid their 6,000-page report and just gone back to their October, 2005, press releases.
Then, the Rand Corporation has reported on the delay-plagued "Road Home" program, which was designed to compensate homeowners for the damage caused by the federal flood. In case you, or the homeowners, were wondering about those delays, the answer is surprisingly simple:
"The grant-making process was slow, in large part, because it was not designed to be fast," said Rick Eden, lead author of the study and a senior research analyst at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "The process could handle a large number of applications, but it was complex, with many potential sources of long delays. It was not designed to ensure that each application would be handled in a timely manner."
Thank goodness those homeowners hadn't survived a major disaster or anything.
At least one city *was* relocated to higher ground after the floods in the 1990s.
Perhaps a few more municipalities will learn to live with the environment rather than in contradiction to it. Even a "10,000 year" levee just means p=0.0001 of overtopping in any given year.
There is a reason why they're called "flood plains" you know.
After all, under the present-day "Free Market" capitalist system, the now shrunken and drowned Corps is designed to do one thing and one thing only: siphon huge quantities of public money into gigantic private pockets via no-bid crony contracts.
And, we can expect that the Corps will continue to get it wrong, at least until enough Republican/Conservative/Family Values voters FINALLY start contrasting on-the-ground reality and fact, with with partisan spin and political talking points.
New Orleans area voters, do you really want working levees? Then you know who to vote out.
That would be everyone.
The institutional problems with the Corps are endemic and span administrations, going back at least to the Lyndon Johnson Administration and probably before that if you consider the "Levees Only" method of flood "control".
I've mentioned Kelman's history of New Orleans elsewhere in these pages so I won't cite it in detail again but it is worthwhile to do a little reading before jumping to conclusions about responsibilty.
As Mr Shearer has pointed out here and elsewhere, one of the reasons why the Democrats don't jump all over this issue is because they're just as guilty of neglect and malfeasance as the Republicans.
The levee system is the domain of the federal government. It is the federal government's responsibility to protect that area with the best designed and maintained levees that can be had. The area is a vital water way and the surrounding communities are agricultural, chemical, petro-chemical, and shipping dynamos that weigh heavly upon our economy. When Katrina hit and the oil refineries shut down it was the beginning of rising fuel costs. The levee system is obviously a matter of national defense and should be undertaken seriously and maintained significantly better than it has been in the recent past and the present.
The fault was the stopping of the levee repair /rebuilding program, and stopping of work in progress on the ID canal levees, both due to lack of money. The ACOE had to end both programs because Bush cut the funding to less than one fifth of the needed amount. Not just once, but for 3 years' budgets.
As much as the ACOE screws things up, still, it boils down to money: no money= no work. Blame Bush first. It was his idea to give tax breaks to his rich friends, then balance the shortfall by stealing money for the SELA rebuild project.
Even without levee failure, New Orleans would have been flooded and damaged. You gloss over that fact far too much.
Some protected areas were flooded by levees that failed and some by levees that were overtopped. Some were both.
As it was, New Orleans and New Orleanians would have been far better off with no levees. The water would have rushed in and rushed out two days later instead of hanging around for weeks and weeks, rotting and ruining structures and damaging infrastructure. And, if New Orleanians had for generations built all structures up on high pilings with sacrificial first floors, as in bygone times, fatalities would have been greatly reduced as would have property damage.
I know, I know, non-New Orleanians, it seems very complicated. And, it is somewhat complex, and multi-ological, though New Orleanians live with these concepts day in and day out.
But dammit, we expected our President and top advisors and appointed officials to at least be up to speed!!!!!
While I don't believe levee overtopping is a valid excuse for levee breaches, I wonder how many of the Iowa levee failures happened without overtopping. This stuff about the flood being a 500 year event is irrelevant if those levees failed without even being overtopped.
From what I read about the levee construction material the USACE used in Iowa, it sounds like they were short sheeted by the USACE too.
These levee failures in Iowa are further evidence of the inadequacy of the USACE's design safety factors. I'm always reading about how Corps engineers think levee design is sort of like rocket science. I say it is only that way if you are using a design safety factor so low that the design requires extreme precision. They leave no room for any mistakes or unknowns. If the design safety factor were 3 rather than 1.3, these failures probably never would have happened. 1.3 is negligent engineering when public safety is a concern.
I'll have to address the levee stuff later after my blood pressure comes down. Can't risk blowing a gasket right now - still inadequate health care available here in New Orleans almost 3 years later....
Worse, under the Bush administration, most of our national and military funds have been funneled to contractors (Cheney-owned, some directly enough it's shameful) who have no intention of working for the sakes of real people when they could work for money and illegally granted and upheld immunity to prosecution or blame or even investigation.
As for Iowa, opinion up here is that the Corp left the lake levels too high for the memorial day weekend, then after that there was no time to lower them.
The question for Iowa is THIS:
Wasn't the Army Corp's lake system DESIGNED to CONTROL FLOODING IN THE LOWER DES MOINES BASIN? And how many floods have there been in Iowa since the late 1970s?
Another good job.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91562363
the Corps refuses to raise the protection level in some areas to 500 year levels (Note: this is in the audio at the link at about 2:25 into the report).
There is no evidence that the Lake Pontchartrain levees overtopped during Katrina!
Everyone knows that the water came into the heart of the New Orleans through breaches in the canalwalls at the 17th Street and London Avenue Canals. And that they both failed at water levels far below what they were designed to hold.
Go to both canls today and you will see the only repairs made were to the length of the breaches, otherwise the floodwalls remain undisturbed by ACOE.
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Can't fight THAT logic!
And at least it's a reason... or rather, a lame Hollow State excuse. They specialize in designing user-unfriendly and structurally-ineffective social service delivery systems in order to reinforce the stereotype that Government IS the Problem. I guarantee that some clown will say as much before this comments thread goes stale. And explain how the NOLA diaspora has no one to blame but itself, self-reliance, bootstraps, no sitting around waiting for the gummint blah blah blah...
When they're administering cost-plus sweetheart contracts to their military-corporate cronies, they seem to do a much better job.
Something about government funded contracts make contractors go slow. Anyone remember how long it took for the FEMA trailers to show up and get hooked up? Delivering and setting up each and every FEMA trailer was expensive.
I'm sure this administration will plead "Big bad FEMA, it needs to need to be shrunk down even smaller and drowned in the bathtub even longer" , OR,
"Oops, we goofed, that address said New Orleans not New Braunfels", OR,
"Wasn't keeping up with those donations Brownie's job?"
Certainly not the likely truth, which probably goes something like, "Those donations weren't lost. We knew where they were all this time. We certainly don't want to encourage re-population of the heavily Democratic - voting 9th Ward by providing even a few household items to people struggling to finance their own rebuild".
Remember when the Reagan Revolutioneers rode to power in the 80's by railing against the "$3000 hammer" wasteful defense spending?
And all that time, behind the curtain, these proto-NeoCons weren't figuring out how to save us tax money and make us safer at the same time. They were figuring out how to triple it to $9000, and funnel that money into their own pockets.
And the "hammers" still don't work.