Posted on 09/17/2005 10:24:14 AM PDT by echoBoomer
The Hurricane Katrina fiasco has been blamed on President Bush, on poorly prepared or corrupt state and local governments, and even (by Rush Limbaugh) on a “culture of entitlement” that persuaded people they should stay in their homes and let the feds take care of them. But blaming it on environmentalists? That’s a new one. The latest wrinkle in the blame game comes in a September 8 article from a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) scribe that charges “environmental activist groups” (specifically American Rivers and the Sierra Club) with opposing flood protection by filing lawsuits against levee construction as an “artificial barrier to nature.”
“The groups argued that the ‘natural’ way would lead to better river management, but it is clear they had other agendas in mind besides flood control,” says CEI Journalism Fellow John Berlau. “They were concerned because levees were allegedly threatening their beloved exotic animals and plants. In his testimony, American Rivers’ [Jeffrey] Stein noted that the Mississippi River was home to ‘double-crested cormorant, rare orchids, and many other species, which he implied were put at risk by man-made levees.”
(Excerpt) Read more at emagazine.com ...
Oh, How I woo for the day that the environmentalist wackos get added to the endangered species list...
So glad to see this info getting out there.
It's hardly "new" at all.
Nope! It's actually the opposite. The new levee will PROVE HOW WRONG THE ENVIROWHACKOS REALLY ARE - I believe Katrina is a death nell to the greenies.
I had a pair of levees one time. I didn't find that they were any better than Wranglers.
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Since their formation SOWL has been fighting for you to save our precious wetlands and to develop educational programs for environmental awareness and ecological improvement. FACT: While politicians talk, SOWL sues! SOWL has been involved in countless lawsuits involving Lake Ponchartrain on every subject....from the New Orleans Levee Board Airport Expansion Plan, Bucktown Marina Expansion Plan, New Orleans Mosquito Control Drainage schemes in wetlands of New Orleans East, Eden Isle Subdivision on the north shores of Lake Ponchartrain, Orlanda Subdivision, Corps of Engineers Hurricane Barrier Project, shell dredging in Lake Ponchartrain, Waterford Nuclear Plant...to the Marathon Oil Company canals in the wetlands of St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes. FACT: SOWL SAVED LAKE PONCHARTRAIN - In 1977, SOWL obtained an injunction from U.S. District Judge Charles Schwartz enjoining the Corps of Engineers from building a billion dollar dam at the Chef Mentaur Rigolets Fort Pike Area, where the Gulf of Mexico enters into Lake Ponchartrain. Had SOWL not obtained this injunction, Lake Ponchartrain would be a stagnant body of water and over 28,000 acres of wetlands in New Orleans East would have been developed into the Orlanda Subdivision.
Dave, did you snag and keep any of that site?
If you ask me ......... most of them ought to be ON FIRE!
Oh, b-b-b-but then what of all the greenhouse gasses that that would produce? /sarc off
"If you ask me ......... most of them ought to be ON FIRE!"
ROTFLOL!!
Thanks! I haven't had much to laugh about lately!
Wow... that was nearly an opus!!
The problem is that many of the people who label themselves "environmentalists" see man and nature as antagonists, and therefore oppose any course of action that would benefit man, even if such course of action would also benefit nature.
One fact that completely eludes environmentalists is that technological advances are generally good for the environment. They may decry the oil industry, but in fact it was petroleum that saved the whales from extinction. Some decry the flush toilet as producing nasty pollution, but in fact it allows sanitation to be performed in much less polluting fashion than would have been possible before.
The addition of floodgates between the lake and the canal would have very substantially reduced the depth of flooding in New Orleans. To most people, this would be a good thing. But since such reduction would have benefitted Man, many environmentalists would have seen it as a bad thing (never mind that there would have been less oil and other stuff dumped into the lake).
I think you all are missing the point of the article. Go back and read it again. Motavalli is, in fact, arguing that the lawsuits by the environmentalist groups were not relevant to the issues of the flooding from the hurricane.
"In Save Our Wetlands v. Rush, the Army Corps had been directed by a federal judge in 1977 to examine the environmental impacts of a large levee project, which would have built a 25-mile-long barrier from the Mississippi border to the Mississippi River. According to the Sierra Club, the plan was opposed by Lake Pontchartrain communities and local fishermen, which advocated higher levees as an alternative. After the Army Corps declined to reevaluate its plan, Save Our Wetlands filed suit and obtained a federal judge’s injunction. The Corps was ordered to conduct a new study of the impact of its project, but it never did so.
In Mississippi River Basin Alliance, et al. v. H. Martin Lancaster, a 1996 case, the levees in questions (again, according to the Sierra Club) were 100 miles north of New Orleans and “had nothing to do with flooding.” At issue was not opposition to raising the levees, the groups said, but opposing the destruction of wetlands for construction material."
Motavalli may be wrong, but his article is not blaming the environmentalists. Read the article more carefully.
Heard this on the news early this week. Glad to see it in print so I can forward to other non-freepers.
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