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New Orleans braces for start of hurricane season, hoping $800 million in repairs will suffice for now. NEW ORLEANS - With meteorologists predicting another severe round of hurricanes this summer, the US Army Corps of Engineers is hastily working to finish repairs to the New Orleans' levee system by June 1 - the official start of hurricane season - calling the end product "stronger and better than before." But independent engineers and scientists say that even with $800 million in repairs and re-inforcements, the levee system is not safe yet, and they caution residents in badly damaged areas against "buying...

Sinking land ultimately reduces effectiveness of levee protection: The Army Corps of Engineers discovered a $4 billion surprise by underestimating the cost of repairing the levees because south Louisiana is sinking. One geologist has said the sinking will continue, especially in New Orleans East, because that part of town rests on a fault line. Bad roadways have become a common complaint over the years for some New Orleans residents, but to LSU Geologist Dr. Roy Dokka, they’re scientific evidence which demonstrate that the ultimate problem goes much deeper. Dokka suggests that Louisiana is not only sinking, but was sliding out...

State water officials on Friday warned of the potential for flooding and levee breaks throughout the San Joaquin Valley as California braced for another wave of storms, with a major system predicted to slam the state by early next week. "We are extremely worried there is a potential for levee failure in the San Joaquin system," said Jay Punia, chief of flood operations for the state Department of Water Resources. "We can't tell you where it will happen. If somebody is living behind a levee in the San Joaquin, they should be extremely cautious." The warning comes as California's rivers...

(AP) NAPA A series of levee breaks in southern Sonoma County is flooding acres of farmland along the Sonoma Creek. The Nationals Weather service says that a levee gave way on the Schell Creek near Schellville failedcausing minor flash flooding of immediately surrounding areas. According to reports, about 100 acres of farmland are flooded. The are a couple of farm buildings partially underwater, but there do not appear to be any houses or residential buildings affected. However, people near the town of Schellville along Highways 12 and 121 should be alert for rapidly rising waters and follow evacuation orders of...

RUTBAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Marines used to patrol the streets of this city near the volatile Syrian border. Now they've penned it in with a wall of sand, leaving only three ways in or out. While causing discomfort to the townspeople, the military says it is an effective barrier to insurgents and frees up troops for use in other parts of restive Anbar province in western Iraq. The Marines ringed Rutbah with a 10.5-mile-long berm, seven feet high and 20 feet wide, in mid-January and reduced their presence to checkpoints at the three entrances that also are manned by...

Friday, March 3, 2006 11:54 a.m. EST Bush Didn’t Lie About Levee Breaching News sources have reported that President Bush lied when he said he wasn’t warned that the levees in New Orleans could be breached during Hurricane Katrina. But a videotape of a key meeting between Bush and hurricane officials supports the president’s contention that the breaching of the levees was unanticipated. On September 1, four days after Katrina struck, Bush said: "I don’t think anybody anticipated a breach of the levees.” The Associated Press on Wednesday claimed that "federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security...

"Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. For there is none worthy of the name but God, whom heaven, earth and sea obey." Thus spake the humble early English King Canute, who once mocked flattering courtiers by demonstrating his impotence in the face of an incoming tide. "Stop," he said, attempting to command the waves, which of course kept coming. ...Thus we have this week's new low in anti-Bush hysteria, in which Democrats and assorted media are alleging some kind of scandal in a piece of videotape showing President Bush was warned that Hurricane...

Just hours after the Associated Press (AP) ‘shocked‘ New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin yesterday by showing him video of a FEMA briefing during Hurricane Katrina in which government officials speculate about the impact of the expected Category 5 storm, the AP has shown the mayor a second “alarming and disgusting” video. The first video shows President George Bush, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff and then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, among others, dealing with how to respond to the developing disaster, and what to make of inconsistent reports from New Orleans about the condition of the Lake Pontchatrain levees. The second video,...

WASHINGTON -- On the day that Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, President Bush and a top presidential aide were worried about whether New Orleans' levees had held, according to a transcript of discussions among disaster officials on the front lines of the storm.Those concerns, expressed about midday Aug. 29, are in contrast to an image of a detached president and also to what happened later that night. That's when an official manning the federal emergency operations center held off acting on reports of levee breaches as he waited for confirmation. .... skip to The transcript, obtained by The Times-Picayune, illustrates the...

snip... BOB BEA: In differing locations along the length of the MR-GO levee, we stopped, I got out and collected the soil samples. BETTY ANN BOWSER: Bob Bea is a civil engineer from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of an independent team investigating why the levees failed. Bea recently took three samples of soil from MR-GO and had them tested. BOB BEA: This material is relatively sandy, comes from probably something that is like a beach that has had clay mixed into it. Now the concern for such material is underwater erosion like comes from...

Flood protection has taken a back seat : Though he spent eight years on the Orleans Levee Board, Robert Lupo didn't spend much time talking about levees. Instead, the real estate magnate organized a $2.5 million renovation of the Mardi Gras Fountain, tried to find takers for the district's vacant real estate and helped lead a failed effort to find a private manager for Lakefront airport. "There were so many committee meetings we wound up spending almost every day out at the levee district," said Lupo, who stepped down in 2004. "It was a constant distraction. . . . The...

Gov. Kathleen Blanco left for Holland on Monday to learn how the Dutch created the huge flood-control system that protects a land much farther below sea level than Louisiana. The trip means the Democratic governor will miss President Bush's visit to New Orleans, scheduled for Thursday... The governor was among more than 40 government, business and education leaders - including Sens. David Vitter and Mary Landrieu ... Landrieu said the ambassador told her about that country's flood of 1953, when 1,800 people died. "He said, `Why don't you all come over and see what we've done since then?'" Landrieu recounted....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal engineers trying to stop New Orleans flooding were unsure who was in charge of fixing the levees amid the confusion of Hurricane Katrina, according to interviews with congressional investigators released Thursday by a Senate panel. In a Nov. 15 interview with investigators, Army Corps of Engineers Col. Richard P. Wagenaar recounted an instance after Katrina hit when federal workers attempted to fill in the breached London Avenue canal and were told to stop. That led to a discussion of "who is in charge?" Wagenaar said. "I mean, where's the parish president? Where is the mayor? And...

Despite racist comments from opportunists like Louis Farrakhan that, "There was a 25 foot hole. We've suggested that it [the levee] may have been blown up so that the water would destroy the black part of town", it appears that, based on population, a higher percentage of white New Orleaners were killed during Hurricane Katrina than black ones. An article titled, Statistics Suggest Race Not a Factor in Katrina Deaths informs us that: African-Americans make up 67.25 percent of the population and 59.1 percent of the deceased. Other minorities constitute approximately 5 percent of the population and represented 4.3 percent...

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) yesterday declared efforts to evacuate state and New Orleans residents before Hurricane Katrina "an outstanding success" and told members of Congress they would not be investigating the government's flawed response into the Aug. 29 storm if levees protecting the city had not failed. Over three hours of measured, at times defiant testimony to a House investigative panel, the first-term governor rebutted Republican charges that overwhelmed state and city leaders did not order the evacuation of New Orleans soon enough or provide transportation or relief to poor, sick and elderly residents who did not get...

Don Powell, Gulf Coast Recovery Director, was asked by Sheppard Smith on FOX News just minutes ago, whose responsiblity it is to rebuild the New Orleans levee system--the city, parrish, state or federal. Don Powell answer--"it CLEARLY is the responsibility of the federal goverment. Taxpayer money will be used to rebuild the levee system."

EW ORLEANS, Dec 13 (Reuters) - An initial test of one of New Orleans' broken levees on Tuesday suggested it had been built deep enough to meet design specifications, raising new questions of what caused the system of flood protection to fail during Hurricane Katrina, engineering officials said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which designed and oversees the system of levees, pulled out several metal sheet pilings from a damaged levee at the city's 17th Street Canal and found their length met design specifications of at least 17 feet extending below sea level. Earlier seismic studies of the site...

When the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board developed a plan in 1981 to improve street drainage by dredging the 17th Street canal to increase capacity for Pump Station No.¤6, residents across the city applauded. Increasingly heavy rains were not only flooding streets, but pushing water into homes. Action was needed. It seemed like a no-brainer. Today forensic engineers investigating the levee breach that flooded much of city during Hurricane Katrina aren’t so sure. The search for the cause of the failure keeps returning to that dredging project as the probable starting point for a series of mistakes they believe...

Young, now helping to rebuild three damaged New Orleans canals between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, said design drawings show that steel pilings reinforcing the levees should have been driven to a depth of 17 feet below sea level. That does not appear to have been the case, based on preliminary findings by an investigative team led by Louisiana State University civil engineering professor Ivor van Heerden. Using sonar, his tests have shown sheet pilings at the canal went to only 10 feet below sea level. Steve Spencer, chief engineer for Orleans Parish levees, said his agency did the...

Late last month, while taking the bus tour of the Lower 9th Ward, Gwenith Fletcher remarked, "I came to see what God had done." Fletcher's sentiment parallels that of many people who see Hurricane Katrina, and all of its devastation, as one of those God-ordained natural disasters that happen sometimes, and reside far beyond the control of mere mortals. But the more I hear about the actions of our public officials in the years leading up to the hurricane, the more convinced I am that this was not a "natural disaster" in the usual sense of the phrase. Consider a...