Posted on 08/30/2005 3:26:07 PM PDT by MetaCon
When the levee breaks
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.
-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
This picture is an aerial view of New Orleans today, more than 14 months later. Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city and the sun is out, the waters continue to rise in New Orleans as we write this. 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 until it's level with the massive lake.
There have been numerous reports of bodies floating in the poorest neighborhoods of this poverty-plagued city, but the truth is that the death toll may not be known for days, because the conditions continue to frustrate rescue efforts.
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. (Much of the research here is from Nexis, which is why some articles aren't linked.)
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 this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:
The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."
That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' 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, as you probably recall, 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. According to New Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:
The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.
"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.
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 was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach. The levee failure appears to be causing a human tragedy of epic proportions:
"We probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio interviewer.
Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the things that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans. But in the tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration decided to roll the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut that mainly benefitted the rich.
And now Bush has lost that gamble, big time. We hope that Congress will investigate what went wrong here.
The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at home, and yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf -- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisana. What does George W. Bush have to say for himself now?
Disgusting.
Disd you expect any less of them?
It is disgusting. I can't remember the atmosphere being so poisoned.
How long before the left accuses Bush and Rove of somehow seeding the clouds to cause this, to take the attention off of Cindy Sheehan, or for some other insane reason? The left is absoultely unhinged, and has been for some time.
So much for politics stopping "at the waters' edge".
This sort of cravenness is why the Democrats have been, are, and will continue to be losers.
To answer your question, I figure about 10 minutes when tonites alphabet news stations start their World News report on the devastation in NO, I said it yesterday, this whole hurricane is Bush's fault wait and see!
A city the size of NO can't come up with 35 Million?
You mean by global warming? Those accusations are well under way! This is insanity.
The MSM will never wish to grasp that decades of corrupt Democratic pols in LA and 8 years of the Clintonistas in DC didn't get it done, yet suddenly it's supposed to be "Bush's fault" in a post-911 era of many national priorities.....
The author of this article is a complete asshat. Everyone has known for decades what the levees around New Orleans are built to withstand. How convenient that this disaster occurred during Bush's administration, so that this fool of a writer can blame him for the fact that New Orleans was built in a swamp 300 years ago.
Fair or not, everything gets blamed on the guy in charge.. Bush can deal with this handily by announcing some emergency funding for MS, LA and GE.. and be presidential surveying the damaging.
Yep, my husband and I were discussing this very thing at dinner tonite.
Everyone complains they don't get enough, but if it is proven the Bush Admin cut domestic projects for the amorphous "reconstruction" of Iraq, that would be big trouble.
Though most of the projects listed contemplated Mississippi river flooding.
Too busy spending the state budget on promotions to make sure plenty of binge drinking coeds who flash their racks for strands of beads are present during mardi gras.
Plus that money also goes to help subsidize the NBA Hornets and NFL Saints teams. Politicans believe its worth it. I mean, what successful winning dynastys those teams are.
Welcome to DU. I mean FR!
Any more of you guys gonna show up? Another of your buddies just posted a quote from this rag on another thread.
You mean Bush hasn't cleaned everything up yet? What's he waiting for? The liberals will try and use this event to say that Bush isn't helping enough. I guess Bill and Hilary will be touring the area even before Bush to show that they are more interested and compassionate. You have that woman governor and senator from Louisiana, both Democrats, on TV crying and showing how compassionate they are. This is tragic and I'm sure many of you love the South like I do, but let's face it, when you build on the coastline you are vulnerable, when you don't evacuate you are vulnerable and it has become the federal government's (meaning all US taxpayers) responsibility to bail out all these places, not expecting state and local governments to do anything. Of course the rebuilding is good for the economy, so always look for a silver lining.
No one should invest in California because of the danger of an earthquake. No one should build in any gulf city or southeastern US because of hurricanes. No one should build in a city in tornado valley because they could be wiped out. Where would you suggest? The delta from the Mississippi to the gulf is a major national asset. We need to repair and bring it back better!
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