Free Republic

In a groundbreaking decision, a federal judge ruled late Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' mismanagement of maintenance at the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet was directly responsible for flood damage in St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

Accepting the appeal of a Michigan developer who has become a hero to the property-rights movement, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday said it will decide whether the federal government has the authority to regulate wetlands miles away from a river or other waterway. The justices will decide whether John Rapanos, a grandfather in his 70s, was within his rights when he filled in wetlands on his property without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. Rapanos had hoped to build a shopping center on his land. They must decide whether to sustain $13 million in civil fines...

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast, flooding the city of New Orleans, journalists began reporting on a “toxic soup” of chemicals and dangerous microbes bathing the city. Based on no reported data, these stories nevertheless seemed reasonable; the city’s sewer system had flooded, and thousands of cars, houses, and chemical storage tanks lay beneath water, which in part of the city reached more than 3 meters in depth. In addition, 24 Superfund sites are in the affected area, and the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard have tallied more than 400 oil and hazardous chemical spills....

As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina's devastation on President Bush's ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left - pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical "diversity" over human life - sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina......

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday that a lack of funding for hurricane-protection projects around New Orleans did not contribute to the disastrous flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. In a telephone interview with reporters, corps officials said that although portions of the flood-protection levees remain incomplete, the levees near Lake Pontchartrain that gave way--inundating much of the city--were completed and in good condition before the hurricane. However, they noted that the levees were designed for a Category 3 hurricane and couldn't handle the ferocious winds and raging waters from Hurricane Katrina, which was a Category 4...

My engineering training kicked in when I saw the NASA photographs from space of New Orleans, and of the whole Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. There is an obvious solution to the New Orleans problem. The Dutch have already demonstrated it. Take New Orleans as the first and worst example. The pumps, levees and canals intended to protect New Orleans have been controlled by local authorities. They left three of the four pumping stations dependent on the local power grid. Hellooo. The precise time those pumps are most needed is during a storm when the local power grid...

Local Man Charged With Possession Of Chemical Weapon Chemist Is Former U.S. Army Employee KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- An Independence man has been charged with possessing a chemical weapon, but prosecutors won't say what he allegedly may have planned to do with the potassium cyanide. The chemical was discovered in his apartment in February, authorities said. A federal grand jury in Kansas City indicted Hessam Ghane, 53. He's a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran who holds a doctorate in chemistry, KMBC's Peggy Breit reported. The indictment was unsealed Friday, when Ghane was arrested and made his first appearance in...

<p>The Defense Department is removing the Army Corps of Engineers from overseeing oil imports into Iraq, acting just weeks after Pentagon auditors said Halliburton — Vice President Dick Cheney's former firm — may have overcharged taxpayers under the Corps' supervision.</p>