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Posted on 08/31/2005 8:53:05 AM PDT by Dr. Marten
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
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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 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.
HURRICANE COVERAGE
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 observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need."
Local officials are now saying, the article reported, 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."
It would be too much to expect the serfs to do it themselves.
Here we go, another 9/11 Commission will be set up to blame Bush.
The "what ifs" need to stop until the clean-up is handled. Then analysis by engineers and safety experts (not politicians) need to provide lessons learned.
I just knew this was George Bush's fault! Thank you for proving it!
/sarcasm (in case some can't tell)
Perhaps if Boston hadn't ripped off the feds for $15 billion for their perpetual Big Dig scam, there would have been some funds for the levees in NO. Someone really should ask that twit Robert Kennedy Jr. about that when he blames everything on not signing the Kyoto treaty.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
I knew they would find a way to make it ALL BUSH'S FAULT!
Since when is it the Federal Government and Armed Forces job to build this stuff? State and City money should be flowing into that, and non army companies charged with building it.
This thread needs a not this $hit again picture.
They have known about this since 1960. But of course, it's Bush's fault.
New Orleans is dying. If they can't stop the flooding, there will be nothing left to save. The authorities need to get the people out of the area ASAP. I pray we have the resources to get it done. Everyone needs to help.
If only the left would stop the playing the blame game long enough to help. But they won't. They are ruled by hate and bile.
By their own admission, they hadn't planned on a Cat 4 to 5 hurricane and that even if they had started in Sep 04, they were still 4 years away from completing a study.
Money gets moved all the time.
The Hurricane history at Eglin AFB shows that since 1886 there has been an average of 1 hurricane every other year in this region. Some years have had 2 or more. Other times there's been about a 4 year stretch without a hurricane.
It is not like this is a surprise. It is not like the city couldn't raise tax money for this purpose or that the state couldn't.
The real blame here lies at the feet of that criminal named, "procrastination."
"I knew they would find a way to make it ALL BUSH'S FAULT!"
Me, too. You could see it coming a mile away. Articles like this make me want to scream! All I can say is that President Bush must be a stronger person than I am. I don't see how he maintains his sanity with the constant barrage of, "It's all your fault", from someone's hangnail to this latest disaster. I pray for the dear man every day!
And exactly how much money was needed anyway? $450 million plus $250 million more, plus the laundry list of other bits...was a billion dollars or more going to defend a city that was falling into the sea?
Rebuild the oil infrastructure, the portage, and enough city to support it. Let the rest go further inland and/or be absorbed by other cities.
People who live entirely in man-made structures do not conceive of how much bigger nature is than man. When the winds blow and the earth moves and the waters flow, that which moves cares not for the shapes of ink on paper or the movements of small green pieces of paper.
With all of this concentration on NO, one would think that they were the hardest hit, particularly in terms of human life and propety damage. After all the facts are in, I believe Mississippi will have suffered the most damage.
That's all the left do....blame and make up some wierd a$$ stories about how it was all a conspiracy. Screw them.
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