Corps Projects Plentiful in Louisiana

The Washington Post ^ | Sept. 7, 2005 | Michael Grunwald

[jp3]

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

[jp3]

So sorry, my link above isn't working...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702462.html

[Bigh4u2]

So it's the 'Corps' fault that the levees were not built higher!


Sheez!

Give me a break!

[Deano4USA]

The levees could have easily been concrete armor plated such that they would withstand a over toping event without catastrophic failure. The flooding would have been minor.

[liberty_lvr]

Living in a part of Missouri adjoining the confluence of three major rivers, and given what we all went through here in the massive floods of 1993, I am quite upset that these crooked LA politicians would play so fast and loose with their inland waterways money. Our flood in north St. Charles County at that time makes NO look like nothing more than a leaky faucet by comparison.

Once you've seen the raw power of unrestrained water, you will become a believer for life. I hope this acts as a wake-up call for these yahoo's to start taking the concept of flood control more seriously.

[CharlesWayneCT]

No, it says that LA congressional delegates (house and senate) earmarked millions for projects that had nothing to do with keeping flooding from happening.

Former Senator John Breaux, trying to justify the mistaken priorities, said:

We thought all the projects were important -- not just levees," Breaux said. "Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but navigation projects were critical to our economic survival."

Well, maybe so, but keeping 20 feet of water out of the city was probably just slightly more critical to your economic as well as physical survival.

So the local and state government representatives thought making money was more important than protecting their citizens, but they want to blame the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT for the results of their priorities?

[1stcav]

Please see the article(s)below for some very interesting facts. There were already chemicals leaking from the USACE site prior to the hurricane. And from a very reliable source, it is known that Poly Chlorinated Biphenals (PCB) were also a major concern, but is not listed in the article. There were thousands of tons of PCB contaminated soils hauled by truck to the Emele Alabama WM disposal site. The politics and contract awarding are highly suspect compared to other bids submitted.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1125125791221200.xml

Corps starts chemical testing in canal
Funding woes, protests delay lock project

Saturday, August 27, 2005
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
The Army Corps of Engineers has begun sampling soil, underwater sediment and water in the Industrial Canal for hazardous chemicals and metals in the area to be dredged for construction of a replacement lock.

The Industrial Canal lock replacement project, estimated to cost $764 million, has been inching forward, as opposition from Holy Cross community residents and a variety of local and national environmental groups has delayed congressional construction funding.



Corps project manager Carol Burdine said that after construction begins, the lock project will take 10 to 12 years to complete. But the corps has stopped estimating when that will be because of the financing delays. President Bush's proposed fiscal year 2006 budget contained no money for the project, but the House of Representatives has recommended $9 million, and the Senate has proposed $15 million.

"This year, we got $11 million," Burdine said of the 2005 construction budget. That was enough to complete the demolition and cleanup of 10 business sites on the canal's east bank that will be part of the expansion, but not enough to do any additional construction.

Even if the Senate recommendation is approved, that would provide only enough money to begin readjusting levees and flood walls adjacent to the project next year, she said.


Double hazard?

The Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, Gulf Restoration Network and Louisiana Environmental Action Network filed suit against the corps in 2003, charging that the agency hadn't properly prepared an environmental impact statement supporting construction.

Based on their own tests and information in the corps' environmental statement, the groups contend a variety of toxic materials are in sediments that would be dug up when the lock is deepened and expanded. Their tests found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; heavy metals, including lead, arsenic and mercury; and a high concentration of the chemical napthalene.

In each case, the amount of the chemicals was greater than state Department of Environmental Quality standards for cleaning contaminated sites on nonindustrial property.

The groups contend that dredging will release the toxic materials, which could contaminate fisheries in the canal, the connecting Gulf Inland Waterway and Lake Pontchartrain. And if the material is dumped upland, it could endanger humans, they say.

A federal judge, in a 2003 pretrial hearing on the environmental groups' suit, ruled that federal Environmental Protection Agency hazardous-waste standards should apply to the lock project, and the corps agreed to conduct the testing that began July 30.

At the time, it said the testing would be completed by August, and the agency was granted a stay of the environmental groups' lawsuit until then.


Taking samples

Corps officials now say that because of money shortages, the testing won't be complete until next summer, and during a recent court hearing, Fallon took under advisement a request from the environmental groups to proceed with the suit.

Contractors administrating the testing program will take core samples from underwater sediment and land that will be dredged to expand the lock, and send the samples to the corps' Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss.

In all, samples will be taken from 82 sites along a two-mile stretch of the Industrial Canal between the Mississippi River and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, from sites that might be used for disposing of the dredged material, and from other sites that will be used to compare with the canal samples.

The sampling will be completed by mid-September, said Linda Mathies, a sediment quality specialist with the corps in New Orleans.

The material will be tested for chemicals and metals included on a list of hazardous materials provided by the EPA, as well as for the substances found by the environmental groups, Mathies said.

In addition to identifying the substances in the sediment, the sediment will be tested to determine whether it is toxic. Plants grown on part of the sediment will be tested to determine whether they took in toxic substances while growing. The entire testing program isn't expected to be completed until July 2006.

Weston Solutions of Carlsbad, Calif., with an initial contract of $360,000, will collect the samples. Severn Trent Laboratories of Edison, N.J., will do the chemical analysis with an initial contract of $935,000. With options, Severn's contracts could reach $2.16 million. Total costs, including the Corps' environmental labs, are expected to be about $3.6 million.

The corps also will send several sediment samples to Pace Laboratories, which will analyze them for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, which will pay Pace for the work.


Questions remain

The lake foundation has advised the corps on its sampling design, and the corps will split several of its samples with that group, allowing the foundation to run its own tests on part of the material.

"We are fulfilling a commitment made almost four years ago to collect additional data before dredging," Col. Richard Wagenaar, district engineer for the corps' New Orleans District, said in a news release.

"The Corps is satisfied that the original sampling in 1993 was adequate to evaluate the dredged material, with the guidance available at the time. The current sampling and analysis will follow more recent guidance and assist the corps in protecting the environment and human health," Wagenaar said.

But Adam Babich, director of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, which represents Holy Cross and other groups suing the corps, said questions still remain about the corps' testing program.

In papers filed with U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon on Aug. 12, the clinic argued that the corps proposes to mix all the sediment in a core, which would dilute any contaminants found in it. The clinic said that violates the corps' own testing manual.

Corps officials argue that the testing manual is just a guide and that the testing method it is using is adequate to determine the danger of sediment contaminants.

Holy Cross critics aren't concerned only about the chemicals. They are more upset that the expansion and the replacement of two bridges going over the lock will disrupt the community.

The existing lock is 75 feet wide, 640 feet long and 31.5 feet deep. The replacement lock will be 110 feet wide, 1,200 feet long and 36 feet deep, which will allow deeper, larger ships to pass through.

. . . . . . .


Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.

---

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/112365402468030.xml


Low river fouls up flavor of tap water
Algae rot, release harmless chemical
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
Does your tap water taste and smell like old socks?

Not to worry. It's just a case of pesky 2-methyl isoborneol, or MIB, a harmless chemical left behind from decaying blue-green algae in the Mississippi River.

The river is at a seasonal low level, only 2 feet at the New Orleans Carrollton gauge, which normally has an average of about 3.5 feet in August.

The low level of the river is promoting the growth of the algae and the resulting bad-tasting water. The water is also so low that officials are monitoring salinity levels to prevent saltwater from traveling upstream and fouling the water intakes.

At this time of the year, the water is moving slowly enough for sediment to drop out of the uppermost layer, which allows enough sunlight in to promote the growth of algae that feed on nutrients carried from farmland, sewage-treatment plants and businesses upstream.

The algae die and break down, leaving behind MIB, which smells musty and tastes like mildew.


Issue downplayed

It's only the chemical, and not the algae, that's made its way into the New Orleans water supply, said a spokesman for the Sewerage & Water Board, and the chemical is not a threat to human health. The chemical culprit is the same compound that can cause taste problems in frozen or prepared foods and some farm-raised catfish.

Similar bad-tasting water problems popped up in 1991, 1997 and 1999, said spokesman Joseph Puglia.

Bad-tasting water also has been reported in Jefferson Parish.

John Radosevich of Kenner noticed the taste last week when he returned from a long vacation.

"For a couple of days it tasted bad, and then for the last two days it was musty and moldy," he said. "We use ice cubes made out of the tap water and that just compounded it. Chilling didn't seem to help, either."

Radosevich said he called the Jefferson Parish water department and was told workers were trying to reduce the chemical by adding activated carbon to the treatment process.

"So today, we just switched over to bottled water," Radosevich said Tuesday.

Jefferson water officials did not return phone calls Tuesday.


Upstream intrusion

The low river also poses another threat to area water supplies: A wedge of saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico is creeping upriver toward the Plaquemines Parish water intake at Pointe a la Hache and, if unchecked, could threaten intakes farther upstream in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish.

Saltwater in the Gulf of Mexico is denser than the fresh water flowing into it from the Mississippi. When the river level is low, the force of the less-dense fresh water is not enough to block Gulf saltwater from moving upstream below it.

A team from the Army Corps of Engineers located the "toe" of the wedge Tuesday at mile marker 42, well above the intake for the Boothville water-treatment plant.

A spokesman for the company that operates the Plaquemines water-treatment plants says that's not a problem because water from the Boothville plant is blended with fresh water from a reservoir to reduce salinity to allowable levels at this time of year.

Mike Callegari, senior area manager for Severn Trent Services, said there's a 40-day supply of water in the reservoir.

Corps officials, however, already are discussing when it might be necessary to build an underwater sill to block the saltwater from making its way upstream, said Rodney Mach, a corps environmental engineer.

While they're watching the location of the toe of the wedge, it's actually the thicker part of the wedge 15 to 25 miles downstream that threatens to raise the concentrations of salt in the river water to levels in violation of federal water supply rules, Mach said.

Federal rules require the level of chloride, the chemical name for salt, to be below 250 parts per million, which is about the same level at which it can be tasted. The average reading for chloride in New Orleans water in 2002 was 35 ppm.


A waiting game

Mach said it could be a couple of weeks before a decision on building a berm is necessary.

In the past, a dredge normally used to clear sediment from the channel bottom has redirected some of the material to create a bump at mile marker 64, above Myrtle Grove and below Belle Chasse, that's tall and wide enough to keep the saltier water from moving upstream.

That sill would be about 30 miles south of the Algiers water-treatment plant.

Such a sill has been required twice, in 1988 and 1999, since the river channel was deepened to 45 feet. It would be north of two more Plaquemines water plants at East and West Pointe a la Hache, Callegari said. But he said the west plant will mix river water drawn from there with water from Belle Chasse, and the east plant will mix river water with water from a second reservoir.

. . . . . . .


Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3327.

[q_an_a]

This story is proof of one fact "if you do anything you don't want people to know make sure there is no record because the Enquirer or the Internet will find your secret and publish it."

[kingu]

Of course they want to blame the federal government. That's how they plan on getting re-elected after screwing everything up... "I'm going to Washington, I'm going to take names, and I'm going to kick [rump]!"

Or rather, they'll figure out what further scams they can get away with. I like how the quoted repair bill for the Superdome went from 100 million to 400 million - 100 million outside of Louisiana, 400 million when the story was posted on NOLA.com...

Millions were affected by this storm, entire parishes are absolutely devastated, towns blown away or washed away, huge bridges washed off their pilings. It is bad, it is over a wide area, not just New Orleans.. I have to keep reminding myself this, else I'll get cold and bitter and note that they can just use all the money they siphoned off from the federal government and fix the place themselves.

[marblehead17]

ping

[1stcav]

This is a very important piece of State Legislation because the exact site location this legislation mentions is where the levee wall protecting the 9th Ward (poor section of New Orleans) was breached. Remember early when it breached that someone pointed this out on TV. This is a massive USACE Inner Harbor Navigation Canal (IHNC) project that has been ongoing for several years and scheduled to last until near 2012. It has been somewhat compared to the "Boston Big Dig" boondoggle as far a wasted/corrupted money is concerned. I think this is one reason that the Bush Administration had possibly cut funding until it could be reevaluated?


http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=92435

Quote:
SUBPART C. INNER HARBOR NAVIGATION CANAL

§41. Contracts for necessary improvements

For the purpose of developing the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal in the City of New Orleans, and more particularly to enable the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans to place the lands adjacent to said canal, owned by private land owners, in a condition suitable to provide industrial sites to be served by laterals connected with the said canal, the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans is authorized to contract with the Board of Levee Commissioners of the Orleans Levee District, the City of New Orleans, the Public Belt Railroad thereof, the Sewerage & Water Board thereof, other corporations, and property owners or groups of property owners, for the construction of all necessary improvements for the purposes provided in this Section.


The USACE has a special website on this IHNC project below. The site also has a click to see of the project that helps one visualize the size of the project. It would be interesting to see how much has been spent since it was approved by the Clinton Administration about 1996?

http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/prj/ihnc/index.asp


Quote:
Welcome to our Industrial Canal Lock Replacement Project web site. We have developed this comprehensive site to provide you with up-to-date, factual information about the project scope and related activities. This site is also available in a TEXT-ONLY format to aid vision-impaired users.

The existing Industrial Canal Lock is a vital link in the nation's inland waterway navigation system. It connects the Mississippi River, the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW), the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet (MRGO), the Industrial Canal (also known as the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal), and Lake Pontchartrain. View an area map (24 kb, gif format). The Port of New Orleans completed the existing lock in 1921. Now a historic engineering landmark, it has served its purpose well for many decades.

Growth in waterway traffic over the years has made the Industrial Canal Lock one of the nation's most congested locks with an average wait of 10 hours, but often as much as 24-36 hours. The basic problem is that the current lock is simply too small to accommodate the volume of existing and future traffic. The lock is 75 feet wide by 640 feet long and 31.5 feet deep. The replacement lock will be 110 feet wide by 1200 feet long and 36 feet deep. The new lock will provide continued deep-draft access to the Industrial Canal and an almost three-fold increase in lock chamber capacity.

Replacement of the lock was originally authorized in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1956, but many years of planning and community involvement were required before Congress authorized construction in 1998. Planning for the new lock has been very controversial with earlier design alternatives involving significant loss of wetlands in St. Bernard Parish or major disruptions to the densely urbanized areas adjoining the existing lock in New Orleans. A product of community input and innovative design, the authorized project [b]provides for construction of the new lock without residential relocations and with minimal disruption to navigation traffic in the canal and vehicular traffic on bridge crossings over the canal.

Although the project has been designed to minimize disruptions, the magnitude and duration (approximately 12 years of project construction) will impact adjoining urban areas including two historic districts. In order to address these impacts, Congress specifically authorized a $37 million Community Impact Mitigation Plan in the Water Resources Development Act of 1996. Mitigation will address job training, improved police protection, upgrading existing playgrounds and many other improvements. The Mitigation Plan is considered an innovative and integral feature of the project and it is being implemented as construction gets underway. In fact, for its mitigation work, the American Planning Association honored the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractor, gcr & associates, inc. with a national planning award, "Outstanding Non-Military Federal Planning Project" of 2001.

[jp3]

Rush read from this article today..."Mary cooked the books." But Mr. Bill sure is jonny-on-the-spot..


OH nooooooooo.....

[Eva]

What the article doesn't mention that there is a lot of money in the transportation bill for LA this year, but not for levees, for bike trails. The people of LA can thank their elected officials for that.

[jp3]

Landrieu's family has much to answer for as well, namely, her brother and father.

[Eva]

There was an article in the WSJ, this morning, that said that Nagin was helped into office by the wealthy good 'ol boy business men of NOLA. The article went on to say that the wealthy intend to shape the rebuilding of NOLA, with a stronger police force, better schools, etc.

My thought was, is this article insinuating that the wealthy want the poor evacuated, and not to return?

[jp3]

Could be, however, they wont say that out loud. I'm going to find the article and read it, who was the writer?

[Eva]

It's a frontpage article by Christopher Cooper. The title is, "Old=Line families Escape Worst of Flodd And Plot Future. Despite the title, the man that they pictured is not from an "old-line" family.

[jp3]

k, thanks, will read...

[1stcav]

LOL ... Come on now, Loyola University gave ALL the Landrieu family degrees for being soooo public minded and helpful.

http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=3303328&Call=Email&Format=HTML

Quote:
Loyola giving an honorary doctorate to Landrieu family

NEW ORLEANS Most honorary degrees mark one person's contributions to a university or to society. Loyola University of New Orleans plans to give a collective honorary doctorate honoring the public service of former mayor Moon Landrieu, his wife and their nine children.

As mayor in the 1960s and '70s. Moon Landrieu helped dismantle segregation. His children include U-S Senator Mary Landrieu and Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu -- and five others in public life or in civic or community groups.

A statement from the university describes the Landrieus as -- quoting now -- "extraordinary examples of people living out the Jesuit mission of 'men and women for others.'"

A spokeswoman says Loyola has never given an honorary degree to a family.

The decision could put the university at odds with a position taken by Catholic bishops. They said in June that Catholic institutions should not give awards or honors to people who defy the church's fundamental moral principles.

Mary and Mitch Landrieu have not stuck to the church's blanket opposition to abortion.

[jp3]

Drat, I can't access the article since I do not subscribe. Can you cut and paste?