"It's scary," says Tom Jackson, a regional levee commissioner and engineer, of the admission by the Army Corps of Engineers that a section of lakefront levee in East Kenner (a western suburb of New Orleans) is contaminated with construction waste, and will have to be lopped off, before scheduled improvements can begin.
Says Brett Herr, who now supervises those regional improvements:
"I don't want people to read this and think the corps is building levees with landfill material," Herr said. "That isn't accurate."
The corps did not respond to requests for the names of the 2000-01 contractor and corps inspector on that job.
Herr said he couldn't explain how this amount of debris got through the safeguards designed to keep such contamination from happening.
He wasn't there then, and those people aren't here now. Crazy how accountability works at the US Army Corps of Engineers. How many other such mistakes have gone undiscovered...yet? But I don't want people to read this and think the corps is building levees with landfill material; they're letting their contractors do it.
BTW: Last night on Countdown, in introducing his piece on a one-day free medical clinic at the New Orleans Convention Center, Keith Olbermann said "last time we were here it was because of a natural disaster". He's correct, nature built flimsy floodwalls.
Follow Harry Shearer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/letwits
Water Barrier
Hurricane Katrina was seen in the courtroom hugging and smiling with her sisters Hurricane Emily, Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Wilma, on news of having been vindicated of these New Orleans flooding charges against her.
The attourneys for the plaintiffs intend to go to DC to ask both the Obama administration and Congress to revisit requests for compensation for folks in both the areas covered in the decision, and other areas flooded do to Corps related levee failures.
At last some positive news. Let no one come to these NO blogs of Harry's again with their assertions that Hurricane Katrina caused this flooding in NO. She still has alot to answer for in Mississippi, but the charges against her in New Orleans have been dropped.
Reach the White House at: 202 - 456 - 1111
Similarly, I've been contacting the Attorney General's office, Eric Holder's office, and been asking for prosecutions in this case that Mr. Shearer has brought to our (my!) attention. It may be that the Louisiana AG has joint jurisdiction with Holder's office, but it can't hurt to demand action from both. (While on the line I also asked for his office to pursue a few other criminal matters we have yet to see prosecutions for.)
Reach The Attorney General's Office at: 202 - 514 - 2001
.
Local corruption or ineptitude play no role in the sufficiency of the levees.
I didn't know that. But the point remains, if you are the manager and you are hiring bad employees, you get rid of the manager.
I am a big fan of your writing and enjoy watching you whenever you appear on TV.
I have a high regard for your efforts, but am confused.
It would seem that you are well-acquainted with the MSNBC folks and have the ear of folks in Hollywood with real money.
You have a specific and important issue that you are fighting.
How is it that you repeatedly sound like you are tilting at windmills?
Where are the big-time celebrities that went to New Orleans? Are any of them on your team to fight for properly built levees?
Where are the local pols? Are any of them on your team to fight for properly built levees?
Have you thought about coordinating a letter writing or e-mail campaign with MoveOn or another group to bring attention to this issue?
Curious,
campaignman
I"m familiar with other ACE projects, and lIke it or not, they've done some outstanding work. Did they botch the levee job in Louisiana? Was their shoddy workmanship more or less responsible for the damage done to N.O. by Katrina? Not to sound Palinesque, but You betcha. They' will always have that to answer for. But with all due respect, I don't think it's responsible to incite a "riot" of criticism.
Thanks for the work you are doing reporting on this.
It did what it was designed to do.
For those who condemn New Orleans as impossible to defend, there is a lesson here:
Flood protection for New Orleans is feasible.
The Jeff Parish levees were built in a different era and were unconstrained by urbanization. They are wide, like the river levees. Making them higher did not require floodwalls. They are armored. They are not as long as the Orleans levees and are less vulnerable to local subsoil variability. The sheer volume of material makes them less vulnerable to unsuitable materials.
The Orleans levees are surrounded by homes. Increasing the height of those levees meant relocating residents or building floodwalls. Almost all the failures in NO are related to poor floodwall design. The NO levees are unarmored; when a crevasse appeared, there was nothing to stop it from widening. The volume of material in a NO levee is very small and is very vulnerable to the tiniest flaws. The Corps' use of a too-small safety factor reduced the margin of error even more.
However, I agree completely that as an engineering problem, flood protection of New Orleans is absolutely feasible. A little more competence is all that's required. The River levees are under far more stress far more frequently and and protractedly. The River hasn't flooded the Cty for a century. The River rises a dozen every year and remains so for weeks. And, the River is MOVING water. The typical break in August 2005 was not due to moving water.
A series of human errors in engineering are what put New Orleans under water, not some unstoppable "natural disaster". The details can be tedious but are no less important to New Orleanians than gas tanks were to Pinto drivers.
The pumping stations for New Orleans were built at the edge of settlement, at that time about halfway between the river and the lake. Jefferson Parish was settled decades later. Levees were not practical as the Corps built up flood protection for Orleans Parish. Cost and community resistance to expropriation for levees meant the flood barriers had to be fit into a narrower space.
Orleans Parish got levees along the lakefront, but floodwalls along the canals. Everybody--and I mean everybody: residents, parish councils, mayors, state officials, levee boards--assumed that with the Federal Corps of Engineers in charge, these floodwalls would work as well as the levees.
They didn’t.
Think about what Corps structures you may be relying on. Dams? Fresh water viaducts? If so, you’re counting on same Corps that allowed the debris to be buried in a levee here. Put your energy into Corps reform and forget about New Orleans (except, of course, to come join the party of the century when the Superbowl champion Saints parade victoriously for Mardi Gras).
Yeah, it was dissappointing to hear Keith say that, Harry. Could Olbermann really be ignorant of the real reason for this "natural disaster"? I would like to think he would want to correct such an erroneous statement if called on it.
I thought the piece on the clinic was well done, and it would have been great to have had an additional segment reporting on the inferior flood protection designs now being constructed, yet again, in NO.
But of course there's only so much broadcast time, and Sarah Palin's on the move again, so....
I'd like to see Keith do a segment with someone like you or Dr. Ivor van Heerden concerning these ACOE issues. Then Keith (and hopefully others in the media as well) could give poor Mother Nature a break from being framed for this very unnatural disaster, and direct the spotlight towards the real culprits as they prepare to repeat their past crimes.
And as for the landfills, er, I mean levees, I do hope this is just an anomaly and not ominous. Did these folks do anything right? Ugh!
.
From a certain grade up, all members of the Corps are listed as having attended classes of all sorts. I was told straight out that while the courses were legally required, they had been deemed a waste of time -- therefore, my paycheck. S**ual harrassment to team building, educational basics to (what I would have considered necessary) equipment knowledge and refreshers, advanced construction courses, and architectural courses. Eco-management and conservation. Etc. You get the picture.
So, you've got a lot of Army Corps Engineers who have very impressive resumes -- courtesy of a low-paid typist. You're welcome. And I desperately needed the money. Who would have listened to me anyway?
I'm actually replying to your remark here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/waste-in-your-levee-dont_b_361045.html?show_comment_id=34732876#comment_34732876
This all started when I was a kid, it was my sister's fifth birthday the day that Betsy struck, and I remember it vividly.... As I was growing up, I can remember kids at school telling me that their fathers were working on the levee / flood wall systems then being installed, and they said that their father's said that the construction was shoddy and because of it they all left town long before any storm could make landfall - and that they were planning on moving from New Orleans at some point because they didn't want to get flooded out.
That's why I say it was intentional; if the kids at my school knew the construction was compromised - and it turns out they were right, of course - then the people who supervised should have know, too. This is criminal, and intentional. At the very least it's fraud....
We are absolutely NOT on opposite sides of this! My other remarks were intended to be applied to dourdinlives' critics...
.