Sandy Rosenthal

On the first day of Hurricane Season, June 1, a certain unease creeps into the city of New Orleans.

Residents begin checking the weather forecasts for low depression spots, the harbingers of monster storms. And they start thinking about levees partly because shortly after the devastating flood during Katrina, the...

In the immediate political aftermath of the New Orleans Flood, conservative commentators fanned a myth that environmentalists blocked the Army Corps of Engineers' original plans for barrier structures and forced the federal agency to choose an alternate inferior design that could not protect the city from Hurricane Katrina's surge.

No...

This week in New Orleans, federal lawyers attempted to overturn a November 2009 ruling that found the Army Corps of Engineers guilty of negligent maintenance of a shipping channel in eastern New Orleans and thus financially liable for damages that occurred during Hurricane Katrina.

Justice Department lawyers argued before a...

In the days and weeks after the levees broke in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, many members of Congress blamed the flood victims for their predicament. One Congressman proposed punishment for those who did not evacuate. Another proposed requiring survivors to get a job to qualify...

Hurricane Katrina exposed more than 50 incidences of design and construction flaws in the Army Corps of Engineers' levee system in and around New Orleans.

When Congress handed the Corps $15 billion and told the agency to build it right this time, perhaps it was believed that...

It was a very bad week for the Army Corps of Engineers.

First, Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, former chief oversight official of contracts for Corps operations in Iraq received nearly a million dollar settlement after she was demoted 6 years ago for blowing the whistle on unfair awarding of...

As reported by the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge James J. Brady ruled on July 7 that Ivor van Heerden's whistleblower claims against Louisiana State University (SLU) can move forward.

Dr. Van Heerden, coastal scientist and former Deputy Director of the LSU Hurricane Center, alleges that LSU officials...

Louisiana State Senator J.P. Morrell has signaled to Governor Bobby Jindal that he will vote against re-appointing two commissioners to the two New Orleans Flood Authorities formed post Katrina citing the high cost of the flood experts' monthly commutes.

Dr. Johannes Westerink, hydrologist for the...

NEW ORLEANS -- In the weeks after the levee system failed in New Orleans, public officials scolded the vast majority of the city's residents for not having flood insurance. It turns up they were wrong.

"Two out of three New Orleanians carried flood insurance -- 67% compared with the national...

Coastal scientist Dr. Ivor van Heerden recently spoke before an international group of stakeholders and scholars at the Tulane School of Public Health's Disaster Management Workshop.

Dr. van Heerden's talk entitled The Use of Computer Models to Understand the Man Made Katrina Catastrophe was done in his usual style,...

NEW ORLEANS -- In the past five years, I have written at least 500 letters to authors, reporters and journalists patiently and politely pointing out errors that are always backed up by data. My goal is to battle the myths still flying thick around the horrific flooding in New Orleans...

NEW ORLEANS -- Last month, a senior editor with the New York Times, Don Hecker told a flood victim from New Orleans - who had lost everything 5 years ago - that he felt the Times was correct in giving all the credit for the flood devastation to a storm....

After a major American city went underwater and over 1,600 people died, a group was formed to make certain the details are accurately recorded for posterity.

That group is Levees.org, which I founded 120 days after Katrina passed east of New Orleans. Its surge triggered the worst civil engineering disaster...

BP Commission Highlights Need for 8/29 Commission in New Orleans

New Orleans-- It's commendable that President Barack Obama has formed an independent commission to look at the root causes of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the proper process for combating such catastrophes in...

Engineers and lax federal oversight are at the center of the BP Oil Crisis and the 2005 New Orleans Levee Failure. Here again, due to the carelessness of engineers and lack of federal oversight, a large portion of south Louisiana is laid to waste.



And now stomachs are churning over...

This week, the Weather Channel featured Harry Shearer and me in a Special Edition piece to kick off Hurricane Season in the Gulf.



The video highlighted our collective ire toward the agency primarily responsible for the catastrophic flooding in metro New Orleans during Katrina, the federal Army Corps...

Just as the long Memorial Day weekend began, federal Judge James Brady scolded administrators at Louisiana State University (LSU) over their handling of Dr. Ivor van Heerden's dismissal.

Dr. van Heerden alleged that he was fired because his criticism of the federal Army Corps of Engineers put LSU's chances of...

Photo by Sandy Rosenthal

I attended the BP Protest and Rally in Jackson Square New Orleans on Memorial Day weekend because there is a distinct connect between the oil drilling debacle and...

HBO's new series called 'Treme' is getting a mountain of press with much of the focus on the character Creighton Bernette played by mega-star John Goodman.

In the premier episode, Bernette became agitated every time he heard the August 2005 flooding described as a 'natural' event. Bernette insists the flooding...

In a strongly worded letter, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has alerted Michael Martin, Chancellor of Louisiana State University (LSU) that, in its opinion, the firing of Professor Ivor van Heerden "raises significant issues of academic freedom, tenure and due process."

Two months ago, van Heerden, the former...