All,

The levee/canal system was poorly designed in the first place.

1) There were no control gates at the lake/river openings to the canals
to block it off in case a levee failed like it just did. The levees
which failed were on canals...not the Mississippi River or Lake
Pontchitrain (sp?)

2) I don't believe the pumping stations have auxiliary power to run
them if the main power is lost.

Those levee & pump systems have been there a loooong time and these
issues are nothing new.

The governments of Louisiana and New Orleans were playing russian
roulette with hurricanes for many years and they finaly got shot...It
was not the US govts. fault the state and city govts. did not follow
and impliment thier emergency evacuation plans. Of course, they (city &
state) will blame anyone else at first chance to avoid responsibility
and if they (city & state) are democrats and the national leaders are
republicans, hey, kill two birds with one stone!!

Jeff

Gman wrote:
"I R A Darth Aggie" wrote in message
...
On 30 Aug 2005 20:11:49 -0700,
Vast Left Wing Conspiracy , in
.com wrote:

+ In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of
+ Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal
+ funding.

+ More incompentence from the Chimp In Chief.

Perhaps the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy would care to comment how
proposed budget cuts for the 2006-2007 fiscal year will affect the
ACoE in August 2005?

James
--
Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow
isn't looking good, either.
I am BOFH. Resistance is futile. Your network will be assimilated.

The cuts started taking place in 2004.

"At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005
specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane-
and flood-control dollars"


Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly
Raised Federal Spending Issues




By Will Bunch

Published: August 31, 2005 9:00 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city,
the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans. That's because Lake
Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main
levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City
some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level
with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct
hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with
state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major
hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm
in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana
Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying
out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping
stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in
crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin
increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to
subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a
trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures
of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time
as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles
in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq
as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The
Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it
coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious
questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush
proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for
Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans
CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has
been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war
in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that
the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the
case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project
manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee
Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that
Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is
sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we
can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have
isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so
that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up
another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had
sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property
taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not
paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of
Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the
federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in
hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of
the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials
said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from
$36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was
needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4
or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the
Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost
about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi.
About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year
budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the
Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district
office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes
the needed money, he said."

The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006.
But now it's too late.

One project that a contractor had been racing to finish this summer: a
bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach
on Monday.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The
Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to
dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed
by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a
significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane
protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local
officials say they need."

Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington
heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection,
including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage
might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will Bunch ) is senior writer at the
Philadelphia Daily News. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 when he reported
for Newsday. Much of this article also appears on his blog, Attytood, at the
Daily News.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1001051313