Free Republic

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...

As part of its ongoing investigation into the nation’s response to Hurricane Katrina, a Senate investigatory committee has delivered a massive records request to the Orleans Levee Board that covers everything from transcripts of meetings dating back to 1989 to all e-mails and written communications sent in the days before and after the storm struck on Aug. 29. The committee included a request to see all agreements between the Levee Board and the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees levee design and construction in the New Orleans area. The Corps is under heavy criticism for its design...

A unilateral decision in July by the Orleans Levee Board's then-president, Jim Huey, to pay himself nearly $100,000 in back salary was a clear violation of state law, Attorney General Charles Foti said Thursday in an opinion issued by his staff. Furthermore, Foti wrote, the $1,000-a-month salary that Huey collected from June through October was illegal because Huey failed to get approval from the board of commissioners. The opinion, written in response to an Oct. 17 request by state Inspector General Sharon Robinson, does not address whether Huey must repay the money. But the salary matter is expected to be...

Opinions differ on his eligibility: Less than a month before Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Orleans Levee Board's finances and left the levees it maintains in shambles, board President Jim Huey requested and got nearly $100,000 in back pay that the agency's hired legal advisers - one of whom is a relative of his wife - determined he was entitled to receive. The payment for about $96,000, which was made without approval from the board or its staff attorney, came on the advice of Gerard Metzger and George Carmouche, two contract lawyers with close ties to Huey, who was originally appointed...