Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute

The New York Times ^ | September 1, 2005 | By ANDREW C. REVKIN and CHRISTOPHER DREW

[Conservative Firster]

The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years.

Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms.

[snip]

This week, amid news of the widening breach in the 17th Street Canal, he realized that the decadeslong string of near misses had ended.

"A breach under these conditions was ultimately not surprising," he said last night. "I had hoped that we had overdesigned it to a point that it would not fail. But you can overdesign only so much, and then a failure has to come."

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

[Conservative Firster]

Ping!

[neodad]

Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud

It must suck to champion lost causes.

[aimhigh]

I was amazed the first time I saw pictures of the levy on TV. I would have expected a double levy (one as backup), considering the potential for disaster.

[Conservative Firster]

Ping!

[bobsunshine]

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

Wonder who supplied the materials or did the work? Will the NYT investigate this?

[stylin19a]

"I don't see that the level of funding was really a contributing factor in this case," said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the corps. "Had this project been fully complete, it is my opinion that based on the intensity of this storm that the flooding of the business district and the French Quarter would have still taken place."

Which is it ? Do these guys talk to each other ?

[Congressman Billybob]

This is another classic example of the NY Times slanting its stories to produce the preferred bias. It was so obvious that I wrote it up for Newsbusters. Click below.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column: "Tide of Lies Swamps NY Times: Employees Riot and Steal Office Supplies"

[ElderEdda]

Since 2001, the Louisiana Congressional delegation had pushed for far more money for storm protection than the Bush administration has accepted. Now, Mr. Naomi said, all the quibbling over the storm budget, or even over full Category 5 protection, which would cost several billion dollars, seemed tragically absurd.

People keep complaining (the ones that want to spend YOUR money) that MORE money is the answer and this tragedy has proven that money does not solve the problems of incompentency. It also shows that some folks have lost the ability or WILL to survive on their own. Rather than stand up and help, they sit down and wait for the gov't to do it all.

For all those statists out there, PAY ATTENTION. This is your gov't-- this is the world YOU'VE created.