Posted on 08/28/2012 9:24:55 AM PDT by NautiNurse
You’re a brave soul, dearest blam!
I guess you’ve lost power? Praying that’s all.
TWC idiots are reporting live from outdoors, just like ROCKLOBSTER said.
Talking about the storm surge being worse than Katrina in some Parishes.
OK this cannot be correct.. just saw a Hurricane Hunter report saying the internal Pressure has DROPPED to 966 MB. Says surface winds are 65 MPH on it though.
Wierdness.
The eye is supposed to be over Houma. That is about 20 to 30 miles inland, but there are lots of Bayou’s in the area.
Just saw Steve Harrigan reporting in waist-high flood water from Ocean Springs, MS. I was expecting him to lose his footing and drop the microphone into the water. Stop the madness.
My last hurricane season in Fairhope, Al right across the bay from Mobile. This one was a royal pain in the butt...
http://www.southalabama.edu/meteorology/hurricanedanny.html
I think this is the one that had a local newspaper headline of "The Hurricane That Won't Go Away", it just stopped and sat in the bay for a while.
I was on the west bay just across from you at Fowl River. Hurricane Ivan came along later an collapsed the bay house I was in at that time.
It flooded a warehouse of mine that was in a 500 year flood plain.
Mrs and I miss the Gulf Coast most of the time. :)
Several feet of water closed I-10 freeway at Highway 51.
This is like Katrina flooding in slow motion. We need these beast to start moving.
6 Years After Katrina, NOLA Levees - Near Failing Grade
Where is Sean Penn?
Here is Ed Schlutz (MSLSD) reporting on failing-grade NOLA levies on 8/29/11.
That levee break in Braithwaite, actually is technically in Plaquemines Parish. That Parish extends out from just southeast of New Orleans all the wait to the southeast tip of Louisiana. So when they say it is a rural parish, it is rural except for the north west corner near New Orleans. We know the area of that Parish close to New Orleans has flooded. So the MSM now appears to be under hyping the storms flood damage. They do not want to state that levees in New Orleans have failed. We do know that Levees to the southeast of New Orleans have failed. That is similar to what happened in the early stages of Katrina.
http://impact.nola.com/environment/print.html?entry=/2011/08/west_bank_levee_authority_join.html
West Bank levee authority joins call to rethink levee armoring
Monday, August 22, 2011
Times-Picayune
The West Bank levee authority is calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to rethink its plans for armoring newly raised levees, joining the state and east bank levee authority in proposing a method they believe could be more effective and less expensive.
more at link.
USGS 07375175 Bogue Falaya River at Boston St. at Covington, LA
http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5000220096
Debris in West Bank levee confirmed by Corps of Engineers inspectors
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Times-Picayune
A contractor raising a levee south of Westwego dismissed concerns about woody debris in the clay used to build the levee and repeatedly refused to cooperate with the Army Corps of Engineers’ efforts to address the problem, according to reports by corps inspectors.
more at link.
http://plaqueminesgazette.com/?p=201
Council tries new approach for levee bond
Jul 2nd, 2010
A dead-in-the-water effort to issue $18 million of revenue bonds to finance improvements to the non-federal levee between Braithwaite and White Ditch on the Eastbank of Plaquemines may have found new life through a resolution passed at the Plaquemines Parish Council’s June 24 meeting.
But the financial implications of the bond proposal and the resolution’s questionable legal reach left several members of local government, including two council members, unwilling to support the measure.
The resolution gives Council Chairman Don Beshel, who represents the Eastbank, the administrative authority to execute all documents and negotiations associated with the sale of the $18 million of revenue bonds, a duty typically left to the Parish President.
The resolution passed by a 7-2 margin, with District 4 representative Stuart Guey and District 5 representative Anthony Buras voting against the measure.
The push to finance the Eastbank levee project through a bond sale first emerged in November 2009, just ahead of 2010 budget hearings. At that time, the council offered a unanimous 7-0 vote in support of the bond sale, with Buras and District 9 Councilwoman Marla Cooper not present for the vote.
As the months passed, the proposed bond sale was advertised and approved by the state bond commission.
But the $18 million initiative stalled when Parish President Billy Nungesser would not give final approval for the sale, which essentially resulted in the parish rejecting all bids to purchase the bonds.
With this resolution, the council hopes to circumvent any opposition from Nungesser.
“The council voted to go forward last time,” Beshel said regarding the November 2009 vote. “Mr. Nungesser didn’t. The council voted to go forward again on this, with or without Mr. Nungesser.”
“My job is not to do this. I don’t want to do this if the president would sign it,” Beshel added. “Right now, there’s a trust issue.”
But it was the financial and legal issues surrounding the resolution that caught Buras and Guey’s attention.
Buras focused his questions on the long-term financial implications the bond sale could have on the parish and whether, in light of the BP oil spill and the current moratorium on new deepwater drilling, the council should encumber the parish with additional debt.
“Given the fact that [there is] a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and we don’t know what the outcome of that is going to be, and due to the fact that our sales tax base is certainly going to be lower than it was last year, I have my concerns,” Buras said.
Buras also asked how Beshel settled on the $18 million figure when, according to estimates Beshel had given Buras, the actual price of the project would exceed $30 million.
In response, Beshel indicated the $18 million figure was tied more to the parish’s bonding capacity than to the actual price tag for the project. Beshel said he just wants to get started on something.
“I’m going to tell you one thing, there is no might about it,” he said. “I’m going to flood on the Eastbank along with everyone else on the upper end. We’ve got to take action.”
Guey, on the other hand, focused on the legal problems associated with the resolution.
“It seems to me the parish council is the legislative body and this authorizes [Beshel to do] whatever is necessary to sell bonds for the parish,” Guey said. “Those things seem to be administrative functions.”
Guey pointed out that the parish charter reserves administrative duties for the parish president. Lead parish attorney Steve Braud agreed.
“My understanding is that this is an administrative function of the parish president,” Braud said. “As said before, the council has no administrative authority with the exception of the measures set forth in Judge [James] Canella’s opinion with regard to the port.”
Acknowledging the rift between the council and the adminstration, District 2 representative Keith Hinkley asked parish bond attorney Hugh Martin directly how he felt about the resolution.
“It would be a whole lot better if everybody was on board when we go to the rating agencies,” Martin answered.
Hinkley then asked, “Would you recommend it to be done this way?”
“If I had my druthers, I would not recommend this. I’d rather see everyone together,” Martin said.
Then Beshel posed a question to Hinkley: “Mr. Hinkley, what would you propose for me, if you were in my position, to do?”
“I guess, Mr. Beshel, I’d have to more forward like you are,” HInkley answered. “At the same time, we don’t want to do anything that’s going to affect the parish as a whole, and that’s a concern.”
Then, Hinkley asked Martin what impact it would have on the parish’s bond rating if, for some reason, the bids were rejected again.
Martin said he was afraid the parish would have a “black mark” against it if the bond sale fell through again. The only way the bond sale could fail, Martin said, would be if the council voted against the resolution or if a lawsuit was filed to stop the sale.
At that, District 7 representative Jay Friedman spoke up.
“The only thing that could actually affect us is if someone, whoever, would actually file a lawsuit against this council questioning the authority of this council?” Friedman asked.
“Yes,” Martin replied.
“That would be interesting to see,” Friedman said with a smile. “I’d be kind of interested to see the outcome of such litigation. Therefore, for that reason alone, I’ll vote for this motion.”
To move forward, the council must start the entire bond sale process again, a process which could begin as soon as the council’s July 8 meeting.
Nungesser, who did not attend the June 24 meeting, said after the fact that he fully supports raising the Eastbank levee from eight feet to 12 feet or more but that the parish can’t legally accept bond money for the levee without a detailed project in place.
“Until we know what we can do with the space we have now and the space it would take to raise it to 12 feet, it makes no sense to spend money on it,” Nungesser said.
Nungesser also said that, to begin the lift work, the levee would have to be degraded to about three feet, which would leave the area even more at risk during hurricane season.
“I would recommend we wait until after the season and then do whatever we can do to give us the best protection while we’re engineering and designing [a new federal levee],” he said.
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