Posted on 08/30/2005 7:04:35 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch
Published: August 30, 2005 9:00 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. 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.
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.
Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming....Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."
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 a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “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.”
Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al 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 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.
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: a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday.
The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night noted that local officials were saying that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, "the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Bunch (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News. This article, in a different form, also appears on his blog at that newspaper, Attytood.
And of course if Saddam had restarted his nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had just blasted New Orleans with a Hiroshima-sized bomb, then Will Bunch would be attacking Bush for NOT invading Iraq and removing Saddam, while wasting money on flood control projects around New Orleans.
If it wasn't in Bush's budget, then he could be blamed for that failure. At least the GOP in Congress is to blame. Either way, you agree with the message of the article.
We're probably sapped from NG troops doing tours overseas.
I'll bet you a stack of dollars bills that when this disaster is fully analyzed the consensus conclusion will be: Hundreds of politicians from the last thirty years are to blame for wasting federal and state appropriations on pork barrel projects all over the country while not focusing on the critical vulnerability of New Orleans and spending the money in NO. This disaster has been in the making for decades as national and state politicians have neglected New Orleans' flood danger while Robert Byrd builds highways that go nowhere in West Virginia. This great flood will go down in history as a failure of the political class in Washington and Baton Rouge. And of course it was also a bad idea to continue building in New Orleans for hundreds of years while the city has been steadily sinking.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2002245573_schools19.html
NEW ORLEANS — Dozens of employees indicted or convicted on corruption charges. Tens of millions of dollars unaccounted for. Eight superintendents in seven years. Rock-bottom test scores. Shootings, sirens and police uniforms, often. The threat of bankruptcy and bounced checks, constantly.
In the dismal gallery of failing urban school systems, New Orleans' may be the biggest horror of them all.
In February, the U.S. Education Department said nearly $70 million in federal money for low-income children was either not properly accounted for or misspent.
If we lived in the UK, he'd at least have to answer questions about it. I can't imagine his responding to a question about this or even putting himself in a situation to take questions on it. I like that Blair has to face the lions of Parliament in the Commons every single week.
I recently developed an ingrown toe-nail on my right foot, which I totally blame on President Bush.
After all, GWB should have seen this coming and offered to buy me a new pair of shoes.
He is obviously an uncaring lunk.
What frustrates me most about politics is how they are so totally reactive and not proactive. A problem on the horizon? We'll deal with it once it's a crisis. Ridiculous. It's the culture there.
The media refers to that technique as being "fair and balanced".
But thank you for parsing that tidbit with a pro-Bush spin.
We wouldn't want anybody to actually understand that Dubya butchered the Corps of Engineers' budget now, would we?
If that's what happened then Bush will take some of the blame for this disaster. But this is a complex issue with many political players involved at the national, state, and local level. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions yet about who is responsible for what. It's fair to make some predictions if you like, but I wouldn't reach any definitive conclusions at this time. It's going to take a long time to figure out all the events over the last 30 years that culminated in this disaster.
Yes, it is complex and difficult to pinpoint which projects were directly affected.
But in general, it is true that Bush axed the Corps' domestic infrastructure budget across the board.
And shifted much of the remaining resources to rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Chance to Reshape the Corps (of Engineers)
Army Corps of Engineers workers consider retirement packages
Bush Didn't Seek $150 Million Corps of Engineers Wanted for Security at Dams, Locks, Reservoirs
Corps of Engineers Builds Toward Terror-Free Afghanistan
It wasn't just the levee improvements in New Orleans that were scaled back.
Vital inland waterway infrastructure projects throughout our nation were affected.
This summer, it was New Orleans that suffered the consequences.
Next spring, perhaps it will be the people living along the Ohio River valley who will be flooded out by the spring thaw.
Folks, it's simple, the Clintons, Bushes and all the Elite which include Government control by major Coporations was feared and predicted as far back as Benjamin Franklins' day. Due your due diligence. They wanna play all of you for suckers thinking that there is a 2 Party Goverment in America. There is a one Party Goverment controlled by International Bankers and their supporters.
Unless the "dummed down by the media population" wake up can be no revolution and will ultimately result in an American with zero middle class (happening now) and controlled by the super wealthy with no rights and subject to the slavery of "every man, woman, and child in America" which JFK attempted to warn us about 2 weeks before he was shot dead. .
The next State controlled terrorist attack is the next plan around the corner to bring the entire U.S. under total control and obedience to the State Run goverenment Patriot Act which not one of our beloved traitor leaders in Congess even read.
Yes America you've been suckered through the TV Screens in your houses and apartments through false images and lies, and punishment is at hand for your lack of control and discpline to maintain and keep watch on a scrupulous Government composed of thieves, bribe takers, and traitors who have sold at your Great Nation to evil men in the name of self serving greed and hypocrisy. Old America has died. What a shame!
What else needs to be said? If the people chose to build there and live there, then I say 'oh well'!!!!!!
It is not for the federal government to guarantee the safety of all idiots in all cities.......
February 17, 1995Source: EU Rota
An Army Corps of Engineers "hit list" of recommended budget cuts would eliminate new flood-control programs in some of the nation's most flood-prone spots - where recent disasters have left thousands homeless and cost the federal government millions in emergency aid.
Clinton administration officials argue that the flood-control efforts are local projects, not national, and should be paid for by local taxes.
Nationwide, the administration proposes cutting 98 new projects in 35 states and Puerto Rico, for an estimated savings of $29 million in 1996.
Corps officials freely conceded the cuts, which represent only a small portion of savings the corps ultimately must make, may be penny-wise and pound-foolish. But they said they were forced to eliminate some services the corps has historically provided to taxpayers to meet the administration's budget-cutting goals.
June 23, 1995
A hurricane project, approved and financed since 1965, to protect more than 140,000 West Bank residents east of the Harvey Canal is in jeopardy.
The Clinton administration is holding back a Corps of Engineers report recommending that the $120 million project proceed. Unless that report is forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget, Congress cannot authorize money for the project, U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's office said Thursday.
On June 9, John Zirschky, the acting assistant secretary of the Army and the official who refused to forward the report, sent a memo to the corps, saying the recommendation for the project "is not consistent with the policies and budget priorities reflected in the President's Fiscal Year 1996 budget. Accordingly, I will not forward the report to the Office of Management and Budget for clearance."
July 26, 1996
The House voted Thursday for a $19.4 billion energy and water bill that provides $246 million for Army Corps of Engineers projects in Louisiana.
The bill, approved 391-23, is the last of the 13 annual spending measures for 1997 approved by the House.
One area in which the House approved more financing than the president requested was for flood control and maintenance of harbors and shipping routes by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Flood control projects along the Mississippi River and its tributaries were allotted $303 million, or $10 million more than the president wanted.
June 19, 1996
The Army Corps of Engineers, which builds most flood protection levees on a federal-local cost-sharing basis, uses a cost-benefit ratio to justify a project. If the cost of building a levee is considered less than the cost of restoring a flood-ravaged area, the project is more likely to be approved.
For years, the Jean Lafitte-Lower Lafitte-Barataria-Crown Point areas couldn't convince the corps they were worthy of levee protection. But the use of Section 205 and congressional pressure has given the corps a new perspective, Spohrer said.
But even so, when the Clinton administration began to curtail spending on flood control and other projects a year ago, the corps stopped spending on Section 205 projects even after deciding to do a $70,000 preliminary Jean Lafitte study, Spohrer said.
July 22, 1999
In passing a $20.2 billion spending bill this week for water and energy projects, the House Appropriations Committee approved some significant increases in financing for several New Orleans area flood control and navigational projects.
The spending bill is expected on the House floor within the next two weeks.
For the New Orleans District of the Army Corps of Engineers, the panel allocated $106 million for construction projects, about $16 million more than proposed by President Clinton.
The bill would provide $47 million for "southeast Louisiana flood control projects," $16 million for "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity hurricane protection," $15.9 million for the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Lock on the Industrial Canal in New Orleans and $2 million for "West Bank hurricane protection -- from New Orleans to Venice."
Most of the projects received significant increases over what the Clinton administration had proposed. The exception: general flood control projects for southeast Louisiana, which remained at the $47 million suggested by Clinton. Local officials had hoped for double that amount.
February 8, 2000
For the metropolitan New Orleans area, Clinton's budget was seen as a mixed bag by local lawmakers and government officials. For instance, while Clinton called for $1.5 billion to be spent at Avondale Industries to continue building LPD-17 landing craft, his budget calls for significantly less than what Congress appropriated last year for Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity hurricane protection and for West Bank flood control projects.
September 29, 2000
The House approved Thursday a $23.6 billion measure for water and energy programs, with sizable increases for several New Orleans area flood-control projects. The Senate will vote Monday, but it may be a while before the bill is enacted.
President Clinton is promising to veto the annual appropriation for the Energy Department and Army Corps of Engineers, not because it is $890 million larger than he proposed, but because it does not include a plan to alter the levels of the Missouri River to protect endangered fish and birds.
One could also say that it illustrates that Dubya and Klintoon have a lot in common.
You've not been zotted yet?
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