Yesterday, the Times-Picayune carried a very restrained story about a potentially inflammatory subject: the Corps of Engineers has discovered a persistent leak in the 17th St. Canal floodwall, the very structure that breached disastrously in the wake of Katrina, flooding a good part of the city. Despite the restraint, the story gets ominous when you hit this quote:
"There's no reason for anyone to worry," (Corps section chief Brett) Herr said. "That floodwall isn't going anywhere."
Coming from the agency which denied, for months, any responsibility for the disaster in 2005, which vilified the engineers who, on a pro bono basis, painstakingly uncovered the Corps' litany of mis- and malfeasance in connection with the design and construction of the flood protection system, that's about as reassuring as Alberto Gonzalez insisting that "we don't torture". Down at the end of the story is the reason why this announcement might well be cause for concern:
The corps spent about $25 million repairing the breach in the months after Katrina, and extra clay was added to the site at that time, said Kevin Wagner, a corps' senior project manager for levees and floodwalls.
In spite of the clay cap, a small amount of water has continued to appear.
NOTE: A small amount of water was reported on the residential side of the canal floodwall by homeowners for a year and a half before the breach. It bubbled up in their backyards, and Corps officials weren't concerned about that, either.
Two days later on March 11 at the GeoCongress 2008 in New Orleans, Dr. Bob Bea from the University of California at Berkeley presented his lecture on "Failure of the New Orleans 17th Street Canal Levee & Floodwall During Hurricane Katrina." The lecture and accompanying 20 page paper discusses in detail the mechanics of seepage from the 17th Street Canal to the protected side of the levee/ floodwall. This lecture and publication, planned and submitted to the ASCE organizing body well in advance, made public the very issue that the USACE has been in denial over. They had no choice but to "come clean" with the problems at the 17th Street Canal.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-10/120841092787720.xml&coll=1
And they wonder why I'm bitter.
I'd like you to show me where wetlands around New Orleans are being subdivided. For all of my nearly fifty years, the wetlands outside the "flood protection" (ahem) levees were off-limits to development. As you drive into the City, you will spend about 30 minutes crossing wildlife refuges and the like. The wetlands around New Orleans are being destroyed by several mechanisms, but none of them is real estate development.
The issue is not whether the locals have the money to repair the system. The locals already pay for 30% of all Corps construction. The issue is that the Corps didn't build the "system" (ahem) adequately in the first place. No amount of repair would or could ever make them right.
Going way back before your 50 yrs, all of Gentilly except the ridge was a swamp and low woodland, drained (via canals & pumps) and then built on.
As recently as the late 70's and early 80's, much of what's now the western edge of Kenner and probably 60 to 80% of what's now known as New Orleans East was hardwood bottom land, swamp, and brackish marsh, all forms of wetland.
On the west bank, it's perhaps even worse. Take a drive past the Naval base in Algiers/Gretna, and swing over to the Belle Chase bridge, look at the size of those drainage canals, and the species of native trees still hanging on in some of the more recently built areas, and tell me that's not ex-wetland. Of course it is!
And then there are the ring-leveed communities, like Willow Ridge, Davis Plantation, and Ormond Estates, all carved out of cypress/tupelo swamp, whose perennial hurricane mantra is "Women and children north, men man the pumps!"
Make no mistake, unsustainable and unwise real estate development was, and is a PRIME source of wetland destruction in and around the Greater New Orleans area, and a big contributor to loss of property and life in recent hurricanes.
New Orleans is a great american city, known worldwide as a center of uniquely american cuisine (creole, cajun) ,art (the birthplace of jazz) , and culture.
This argumennt is not being debated about Florida which anually recieves several times the number of hurricanes N.O. does. This debate never springs up about San Francisco (I am a Bay Area native) which has been destroyed twice by earthquakes in the last 100 years.
New Orleans for some reason has become the red-headed stepchild city of the US. When we want to a convention or a superbowl party we will go there , when we want Oil we dril offshore there. But when it's time to provide federal support to the region, we convienently find an argument that allows us to neglect the area.
My friends, it is time to pay what we owe.
Un-fracking-believeable... You've brought it to our attention Mr. Shearer, and for that I thank you. Now, I think I'll go email a Congressman, or three.!
HARRY RESPONDS: I'd suggest it wasn't me who put the Corps in an "impossible position", but rather the Corps itself. Had it been transparent and honest immediately after the breaches, it would have earned points for credibility (even as it lost them for competence).
I was very interested in Rumsfeld's views on Iraq - while he was in the position to determine policy there. I found little credibility in his views, because as facts became known, he was often wrong. So, I trusted him less. My disagreement with his policy did not affect his credibilty, only his credibility did so.When he left office, I lost track of him.
When the Corps lets competent experts review their work, and lets us see the process, they will reverse the decline of their credibility. Right now, they are in the position of the discredited, though still in power, Rumsfeld; they still matter, because they still run the game.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/eastjefferson/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1208323508243710.xml&coll=1
Will they never learn? While repairing a levee that failed rom their incompetence, the Corps commits more incompetence. Burying debris like rocks and broken pipe creates surfaces that compromise the strength of the levee and gives paths to seepage that potentially leads to failures. Duh!
This is the link to another equally ominous article:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-10/120841092787720.xml&coll=1
Ominous, because the levee in question held during Katrina and it protects the last undamaged basin on the East Bank, and its roughly 500,000 residents.
http://www.leifpettersen.com/leifswriting4/hansbrinker.JPG